Qnkaa Electronic Digital Dial Indicator with Magnetic Base Holder Fine Adjustable Long Arm 0-1" / 25.4mm Inch/Metric Conversion Professional Gauge 0.01mm/0.001"

I “rationalized” owning a dial indicator for first time, used for checking runout on drill press and displacement on stress-strain device after the usual checking thickness of paper, etc. build quality seems good, magnetic base secure, and digital display easy to read. Repeatability of readings seems good. I like that you can tighten all 3 joints with one knob and still have the extra vernier knob for fine tuning. I found with arm fully extended out it struggles a bit to hold position- this would be akin to a human holding a 50# weight close to one’s chest or at arms length. So I found that setting up arm at something less than 120 degree angle is better. I admit feeling shame for buying this tool built in China; I would have preferred to pay a little extra for something built in US, but only thing I could find was Starrett at about 7 times the price- could not justify that expense for my relatively small home uses.

The key functions, inch or mm, zero out and the display are straight forward and accurate. The magnetic base works on both the bottom and the back. The clamping function and extra probes are also very well made and work quite well. This tool does what I need. A poor mans DRO (Digital Read Out) for my lathe. I bought a second one for my work.

Very nice quality from the base to the gauge itself. Very sensitive and accurate deflection. Used to determine head squish band on old two stroke MX bike for decking purposes and was spot on. Wish the sucker was stronger, but that would likely only be achieved by using a more pliable material and end up raising the cost.

Had a bearing go bad in my Mercedes and decided to fix it myself. Bearing must be seated to a tolerance of .01mm to .02mm to meet specifications that would be impossible to do by "feel" as many claim. This precision instrument totally filled the bill. I got the digital version (glad I did), due to the ease in reading the large LED display. This instrument is quality built and feels sturdy, has a nice heavy-duty carrying case, includes 21 various tips for the instrument's measuring probe, includes a battery and instructions. After installing new wheel bearing in my car, it is buttery smooth and I saved over $500. note: Everything went so smoothy I began having second thoughts on the instrument's accuracy. I have since tested it against my wide assortment of feeler gauges and it reads precisely what is stamped on the gauge, including my smallest one that is .04mm. Very happy with this purchase and highly recommend it to anyone seeking this level of precision.

In my initial testing it seems to work perfectly well, as expected. The total range is just over 1 inches (mine goes to 1.056" or 26.82 mm) so you can easily measure a full 1" reference. There is a button-cell battery behind door #1 (which was included, and already installed) but I am curious about door #2 which the brief instruction page does not mention. It seems to reveal four PCB edge connector pads, I'd guess for a data transfer cable. EDIT: If you lookup the Hackaday project "Digital Dial Indicator CNC Surface Probe" you can in fact get the digital readings into a computer automatically, IF you build a separate circuit. It's a custom 1.3V signal, clock and data protocol; oddly enough it's BCD in inch mode, but straight binary in mm mode. Anyway, not an officially supported feature, so the cable for this is not sold AFAIK.