Fixing Digital Calipers

Hi there! In this post I'm going to show you how to fix a digital caliper in a very easy way. In fact, it's so easy that I had serious doubts about it until I tried and saw the results with my own eyes. :P

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About two years ago I bought a cheap digital caliper from ebay and never used it much until the last three months, when I started building my 2nd CNC Machine, "TheMaker2" (you can also check my first Homemade CNC: TheMaker1). After some use, the digital caliper started to show some strange readings, jumping to random values. It became useless and I started wondering on how to fix it. After some searching I found this page  which seemed to concern the exact problem that I was having with my caliper. When I saw how to fix it I thought "It can't be that easy :|". Well, it is! :D It's a 5 minute procedure and worked perfectly. Here's how to do it:
  1. Remove the metalized sticker in the back of the caliper.
  2. Unscrew as many screws as you find below the sticker.
  3. Detach the reader from the rest of the caliper.
  4. Place one layer of adhesive tape over the circuit board (see pictures below).
  5. Attach the reader to the rest of the caliper.
  6. Screw all the screws that you unscrewed before.
  7. Glue the sticker in the back again.
And that's it! You should have a fully functioning digital caliper now :). At least it worked with mine.

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You must be aware that this fix may lead to a very very small loss in precision of the readings due to the change in capacitance because of the adhesive tape but hey... if you need very very precise readings you shouldn't have bought a cheap caliper in ebay in the first place! :P

For some more details about this fix and the inner workings of the digital caliper check the original page where I found this fix. Hope it works for you! :)



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