Does anyone make a direct reading dial caliper in N scale? That is does it read in scale feet/inches so one can avoid calculating the conversion?
Is N scale half of HO scale? What is one foot in mm for N Scale? And for thousandths of an inch?
I’ve never heard of such a thing, though I guess it could exist. I’d be pretty suprised though, that would be a pretty specialized piece of gear.
No, N is not half of HO, though that is a quick and easy approximation for rough useage. N scale is 1:160, while HO is 1:87.1. So, one foot in N scale is 12/160 inch, or 0.075 inch, or 1.905 mm. A convenient quick conversion is that 40 feet is three inches.
For use with a regular caliper you could create a table using a speadsheet and keep it handy while using the calipers.
I bought a digital read out caliper for $15 at a pawn shop & either pull up the calculater on the computer or get my other one out of the desk for handy & quick calulations. I always try to remember that 1"=87" so 1" =7.25’ HO so 1"=160" & 1"= 13.33~ in N. It may scramble the old noodle for a little bit but after a few calculations it has become alot easier for me. I do alot of layout & structure drawings in AutoCAD & I convert my dimensions to HO so this really helps. I know several manufacturers that make scales in O, S, HO, & N, but off hand I don’t know anyone that makes calipers in the different scales. Tweet.
I’ve never seen one for N scale, I have one for H0 (from Micromark).
N is not half of H0.
I remember a multi-scale calculater that could convert between different scales in feet/inches and decimal. I think Micromark had them or Expo Ltd, you could check around. Maybe Walthers carries them?
I have never seen or heard of a direct reading dial caliper that read out directly in scale feet and/or inches. Frankly I was astounded at the suggestion. You can buy a scale that reads out directly, and combine that with either some dividers or a caliper and it ought to get you there.
MicroMark offered an HO & O dial caliper at one time(not sure if it is still available). I have never seen a N scale version. BTW, N scale is not 1/2 of HO - it is somewhat larger. I have a MicroMark ‘digital’ caliper that i use for my model work - measure in both metric and english…
Jim