It’s not exactly a hot take on the internet that standard (SAE) is worse than metric, but working in environments where both types of hardware are being used is just the worst. Especially if something that was originally a metric piece of hardware, like a simple metal screw has been replaced by an SAE one. Sometimes at least the hole it goes into has been properly drilled and threaded, but other times (especially if the material it’s going into is aluminum) some Bubba will get 'er done by simply gorilla strengthing an SAE screw into metric threading. I sometimes discover this when my proper metric wrench or Allen key doesn’t quite fit correctly. I don’t carry SAE tools, so I have to go find somebody with a 1/27th or 6/18th or 420/69 or whatever stupid sized tool. Because at least with metric there’s no memorizing fractions for screw sizes so I can just look at a thing and think “eh looks about 6mm”. And what’s worse is the chances of stripping a screw go up about 100x in mixed environments because when people just mix and match, it’s much more likely for somebody not to notice their tool isn’t properly seating into hardware until they put their body weight into it and then it becomes my problem trying to fish out a stripped screw that requires me to remove 5000 panels to get good access to said mangled screw.

Anyway, how’s everyone else doing?

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    1 day ago

    I agree completely with the mixing of types but we can look at an SAE bolt and tell what size it is just as easily as you can look at a metric one. And maybe it’s bad manufacturing or some other type of industry standard but I have had many more metric bolts with a different sized head for a given shaft size than with SAE, like an M12 with anywhere from 17mm to 19mm head.