Terence David Lines
master brummie
Lo
Love the name Grompers For Hole punches that was the actual sound they made when you used them. Now did anyone ever use a thing called a Plastigauge. This we used to measure the tolerance between two moving parts. We only used it if we had a problem and we suspected that a bearing was running tight or too loose. They were one thousandth thick. You would place them under the bearing on a con rod tighten it up to the Crankshaft in an engine then see if it went tight, or also if the tolerance was three thou put four under and see if it still turned then you would know you had too much tolerance.We called it a 'slip stick' at university but I think that was an 'in-group' thing, just as hole punches or staplers got called 'grompers' from the sound that they made!
There was a fine balance to be had with a slide rule, you wanted it to slide easily but also to stay put once you had it set up. I found them useful for working with resistive voltage dividers. I set the ratio that I needed then ran my eye along the rule looking for near matches of a 'preferred value' resistor on each scale, i.e. 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68, or 82. You can't do that with a calculator, however precise.