Moore and Wright Micro 2000 TOOL RESCUE AND REFURB

I have digital micrometers and all usually require the user to be a hand contortionist and leaving a thumb and finger to operate the spindle to make the measurement.

I happened in a Boot sale to spy upon a digital Micro 2000. These are old school and from times gone past.

I liked the fact that the device was single finger activated and self-closing. If you have used one you will know that it takes time to whiz the spindle between large changes in size.

This design took care of all of that. One small problem, it was very dead, it had drowned in coolant fluid. It was a use for spares offering.

The price was £3.00 so I had to decide to take a chance on this and be able to make it work again, or just buy an ice cream on the way home.

I took it home and started to work on it. The item was a mess, everything was covered in the residue which had dried, battery compartment was shot and well corroded.

A complicated pair of optical glass etched graticules was employed to do the measurement. 

It is accurate to 0.001mm when working.

Seen this before in the days when a 1MB hard drive and the platter the size of a dustbin lid rotating at 2000 RPM, the drive was the size of a washing machine and employed a less complicated system like this for track head indexing.

This was a double beam and much more complicated. In truth I did not fancy my chances to split apart the optics to clean them, and then reassemble. The issue would be the alignment. Get it counting correctly and not have it drop digits while in operation and always return to zero.

I had Isopropanol 99.99% pure and very inflammable to hand, an ultrasonic cleaner. A few minutes in that, a fluid change and repeat until the fluid stayed clear. 

Allowed it to dry off, hand cleaned the rest.

A new battery was £20 ish and this is no longer in production, so the new replacement could also be old.

A new 9 Volt 200 ma/H PP3 (£2) gave its life to the greater good, it was 7 cells reduced to 4, wires tabbed and insulating tape. The cells are 1.35V during charge and drop to 1.2V under load. 5 Volts and we are good to go.

The transit case was broken, it now lives in a new home and ready for another useful life.