CUTTING THINGS FINE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 270, 12 February 1941, Page 6

CUTTING THINGS FINE

The phase "a hair's breadth" is still used in everyday speech'to denote the smallest measurement imaginable. But modern machine tools are often designed to give such standards of precision as would make an actual hair's breadth variation in measurement seem a coarse inaccuracy, an almost slipshod margin of error. There is, of instance, in the gauge room of the Lucas factory at Birmingham, a machine known as. Universal Measuring Microscope, which works to an accuracy standard of one-hundredth part of a thousandth of an inch! An incredible dimension if you try to visualise it, but actual enough to make a vast difference to the efficiency or otherwise of the tools and components which are submitted to its arbitration. 1 This instrument has few counterparts in Great Britain, or even in the world. It stands in a room by itself has the size and weight of a small lathe arid looks as: uniike tlie conventional microscope as can be im agined. Its five powerful lenses enable any article under examination to be scrutinised thoroughly from every angle, and the minutest discrepancy can be instantly noted and condemned.

One of the principal uses of the microscope is lo check the fine gauges used in the manufacture of I„u----cas products.