Throughout my first years of working in the metrology industry, I was always told that the best precision instruments were manufactured in Switzerland and Germany. After years of working with a wide variety of precision measuring tools, I started to agree with this statement and it was a Swiss caliper that caught my attention. In 2003, the Fowler High Precision, who is the US agent for a Swiss company called Sylvac, unveiled the fourth generation of the Ultra Cal Electronic Caliper and it immediately became a personal favorite of mine. I could feel the difference in how smoothly the reader head travels up and down the Sylvac scale and it was not like any other caliper that I had used before.
The Ultra Cal IV calipers are offered in three different measuring ranges. This generation is IP65 protected and is offered with a 5-year warranty which you do not find to often in this industry. The feature of this caliper that stood out to me most was the direct RS-232. With the purchase of one simple cable, an operator can be sending readings on the caliper directly to a laptop or PC just by the push of a button. This feature saves hours of work by not having to have your employees keep a manual log of each measurement.
Fowler High Precision offers a 9-pin serial cable (54-115-333) as well as a USB cable (54-115-525) so you will not need any type of mux box. With the purchase of either cable, Fowler offers free basic software called Gage Wedge that will allow you to transmit the data to a Microsoft program such as Notepad or Excel. The quality of the measuring tool, great RS-232 output, and free software are three reasons why I always recommend the Ultra Cal IV Electronic Caliper.
Fowler/Sylvac Ultra-Cal IV Electronic Calipers:
- 54-100-444 Ultra-Cal IV Electronic Caliper: 0-6″/150mm
- 54-100-448 Ultra-Cal IV Electronic Caliper: 0-8″/200mm
- 54-100-412 Ultra-Cal IV Electronic Caliper: 0-12″/300mm