Spent $150 on a cheap edge finder and it threw off three jobs

Bought a no-name edge finder off Amazon for fifteen bucks and it was off by nearly 0.005 inch. Cost me two aluminum plates and a steel bracket before I figured it out. Ended up grabbing a Mitutoyo for $75 instead and haven't had a problem since. Anyone else get burned by cheap tooling they thought was a deal?

2 comments

2 Comments

bettywilson28d ago

My buddy learned this one the hard way too. He found a set of those cheap import parallels for like twenty bucks and they were out of square by almost 0.002 inch on one end. Messed up a whole fixture block he was trying to make. It's one of those things where you think you're saving money but really you're just paying for the lesson twice. At least now you know to spend the extra on anything that actually touches your workpiece. The price of good tooling is nothing compared to the cost of scrapped parts.

the_sean28d ago

The same thing happened to me but with a set of cheap parallels I got off Amazon... I was real proud of my $18 find until I checked them with a mic and found one was tapered by almost three thou end to end. I kept using them anyway like an idiot and ended up ruining a little heat treated plate I was squaring up for a buddy's project. Had to start over from scratch with a fresh chunk of O1 and by the time I added up the material and my time I could've bought a nice set of Starretts. Now I keep those cheap ones around just to remind myself not to be cheap... they make great door stops.