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Inside a cheap set of eBay digital calipers

bigclivedotcom · 758.3K views · 2020-12-11 · 23:32

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Overview

Big Clive tears down a cheap eBay digital caliper, explaining its capacitive linear encoder and measuring its quiescent current. He finds it surprisingly accurate and repeatable for its price.

On Hacker News

Cited in caliper threads as a teardown showing how cheap digital calipers work and that they are better than expected.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2021–2024

Topics

Repair, teardowns & right to repairElectronics & circuit design
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digital caliperscapacitive encoderbig cliveteardownmeasurement

What people said

djmips · 2022-09 · Recommendation

That's interesting. Big Clive explored a set of inexpensive calipers that seemed to work on an interference pattern but sensed with two PCBs passing over each other. He mentions in his theory of operation moire pattern measuring devices. It's a fascinating device. [VIDEO]

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RA2lover · 2024-04 · Reference

Haven't looked into this deeply, but isn't this basically a vernier pattern printed into a hologram? How would this be better for mass manufacture compared to a vernier pattern capacitive encoder as seen in cheap calipers such as [1] ? I'm pretty sure photodetectors would be more expensive than capacitive sensors. AFAIK these are also based on an expired patent which i believe to be US4743902 [2], that was mainly used by Mitutoyo. [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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adolph · 2023-02 · Reference

Big Clive also covered this a couple years later. Has more of an emphasis on the teardown and schematic. The comments are also great for links to other people's findings. This article is great for more details about how the electrons move. [VIDEO] I'd like to adapt the concept using flexible pcbs to make a largish Nest-style rotary encoder. To understand Vernier measurement conceptually, the Wikipedia article is actually not bad: [LINK]

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Sources

Video by bigclivedotcom, played through YouTube.

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