Could you please add metric units to all documentation (specs, manual). It’s annoying to convert everything, and I think the users in the rest of the world would be thankful also. 
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But Antartica… Think of the penguins…
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I was just talking to my friend in Myanmar and my other friend in Liberia the other day and we can’t for the life of us figure out what is so great about the Metric system. lol Sorry couldn’t help myself.
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But even if the metric system wasn’t the best thing ever, Onefinity really should supply both units in their documentation if they are selling the product internationally.
So:
- Imperial
- Metric
-
Banana (for scale 
)
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Banana… Yes… But of course is it one of those awesome tiny ones or a standard Chiquita?
I agree, i prefer metric over imperial and I am an American
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The picture is not really true. The USA officially adopted the metric system early.
See also this map which shows real use today.
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But hey, the Onefinity CNC comes from Canada. Please, can we have metric units in the docs. Et un manuel en français serait sympa (chez LeeValley c’est normal)
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Hey Satoer,
you got to update your map:
Boris Johnson announces the return of imperial weights and measures
… S. P. Q. B. (Sono Pazzi Questi Britanni)
But I think the imperial system is also very nice:
© Christoph Päper, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
During one of the US’s pushes to “teach metic” in my junior high days (early 70s, Deep South), we were ‘taught metric’ about a day. The rest of the semester was taught ‘conversion’ to and from imperial/metric.
I could see that metric was the less confusing, but the overwhelming majority felt it cumbersome… it wasn’t, it was ‘conversation’ that was cumbersome. (How many meters in 1’ 2-3/8”)
Just teach metric. Slap the teacher’s hands if they mention inch, foot, yard, or mile during the first half of that semester.
My opinion. As they say, everybody’s got one.
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I like “base 10” and water.
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Hey all,
it seems that the link above is broken, it leads to the wrong citation. The correct target is this one:
^ * In the United States, the history of legislation begins with the Metric Act of 1866, which legally protected use of the metric system in commerce. The first section is still part of US law (15 U.S.C. § 204).[k] In 1875, the US became one of the original signatories of the Metre Convention. In 1893, the Mendenhall Order stated that the Office of Weights and Measures … will in the future regard the International Prototype Metre and Kilogramme as fundamental standards, and the customary units — the yard and the pound — will be derived therefrom in accordance with the Act of 28 July 1866. In 1954, the US adopted the International Nautical Mile, which is defined as exactly 1852 m, in lieu of the US Nautical Mile, defined as 6080.20 ft = 1853.248 m. In 1959, the US National Bureau of Standards officially adapted the International yard and pound, which are defined exactly in terms of the metre and the kilogram. In 1968, the Metric Study Act (Pub. L. 90-472, 9 August 1968, 82 Stat. 693) authorised a three-year study of systems of measurement in the US, with particular emphasis on the feasibility of adopting the SI. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 followed, later amended by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, the Savings in Construction Act of 1996, and the Department of Energy High-End Computing Revitalization Act of 2004. As a result of all these acts, the US current law (15 U.S.C. § 205b) states that
It is therefore the declared policy of the United States –
to designate the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce;
to require that each Federal agency, by a date certain and to the extent economically feasible by the end of the fiscal year 1992, use the metric system of measurement in its procurements, grants, and other business-related activities, except to the extent that such use is impractical or is likely to cause significant inefficiencies or loss of markets to United States firms, such as when foreign competitors are producing competing products in non-metric units;
to seek out ways to increase understanding of the metric system of measurement through educational information and guidance and in Government publications; and
to permit the continued use of traditional systems of weights and measures in non-business activities.
I think 15/16 of the problem is having to deal with fractions.
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Yet People still drink Pints, use 1/4 3/8 and 1/2 inch rachets for 10mm and 14mm sockets, still purchase wood in 4/4 8/4 and 8/8.
How do people who know metric divide a pizza or pumpkin pie? Do they just avoid eating pie all together?
How is time measured in metric? 100 seconds, minutes, and hours in a day?
So are you saying the metrics is easier, or people that use it are not educated enough to figure out fractions?
LOL
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How do days/ weeks/ months work in the metric system? Do they have 10 days a week? 10 weeks a month?
Yes, humans can be quite inconsistent when it comes to units of measurement. I’ve noticed this while watching TV shows produced in Great Britain and Australia, where characters might talk about distances in metric units one moment and then switch to miles in the next scene. And don’t get me started on carpenters and their use of Imperial measurements in Canada!
The point I want to make is that dealing with fractions can be a real headache for many people, including myself. Despite getting solid A’s and B’s in high school math classes, I still find working with fractions to be a bit of a challenge. It’s not uncommon to see professionals like auto mechanics taking a few seconds to mentally calculate which ratchet size to use on a bolt, going back and forth in their heads.
However, I believe that if you were to approach anyone older than a grade school student and ask them whether 5mm is bigger or smaller than 6mm, they wouldn’t have to think too hard about it. It’s one area where the simplicity of the metric system shines through.
Also, I think it’s somewhat universal to say I want “half”, or “a quarter” of your pizza. But saying I would like 9/16 of your pumpkin pie is where it all breaks down for me. Side note, Home Depot now sells plywood in 22/32 thickness…really!?!
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Hey Lawrence,
the point is clear, and no one who uses their head to think should have any difficulty coming up with it: If peoples and countries all used different units of measurement, then there would be terrible difficulties all over the world. And this was the case! That is why, in the 19th century, the peoples of the world agreed on the SI units, which make it possible for everyone, even aliens, to derive all units on the basis of fixed physical quantities that are the same everywhere.
All people in these countries had to put up with an unpleasant difficulty then:
Namely, they had to give up their old system of units and measurements, into which they were born and which was the only one they were used to.
But people realized that it was necessary for all people to agree on equal and objectively derivable units, and since most systems of units are based on the number of a human’s fingers, because people have always counted with their fingers.
All people had to take the step: Abandon their old system. All of us, all peoples in the world, had to take this step.
The problem is not even a certain people who think they are a better people than the others and are too narrow-minded and conceited and stubbornly stick to units of measurement where a fluid ounce weighs something different than a solid ounce, and things happen like the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter.
No, that’s not the problem at all. Metrication in the USA, which began in 1866, has been a nearly complete success (and I believe, why should the new, independent country stick with units of the Empire that it freed itself of?). All sectors such as science, medicine, machine and vehicle construction, the military, etc. have long since done what all other nations have done: Given up their old system and converted to SI units and calculate in powers of 10. According to Wikipedia, it is actually only the construction sector that is the least willing to take the step that the rest of humanity has taken. Even Germans and Japanese today build their traditional houses in SI units and powers of ten. And Germans knew very well what was the benefit: As they were not a united country before 1871, you had units that varied from town to town, from territory to territory. So who knows why this small fraction[sic!] of the United States Citizen still oppose, but one thing is sure: Billions of people in the world, practically nearly whole mankind, managed to get it done already long ago, and are united in their measurement system, and quite happy with it.
Hey Alex @Dr-Al, hey Lawrence, hey all,
Time is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in both the International System of Units (SI) and International System of Quantities. The SI base unit of time is the second, which is defined by measuring the electronic transition frequency of caesium atoms. General relativity is the primary framework for understanding how spacetime works.[10] Through advances in both theoretical and experimental investigations of spacetime, it has been shown that time can be distorted and dilated, particularly at the edges of black holes.
[…]
The second (s) is the SI base unit. A minute (min) is 60 seconds in length (or, rarely, 59 or 61 seconds when leap seconds are employed), and an hour is 60 minutes or 3600 seconds in length. A day is usually 24 hours or 86,400 seconds in length; however, the duration of a calendar day can vary due to Daylight saving time and Leap seconds.
– Source: Time – Wikipedia
Outside using prefixes with the SI unit second to get milliseconds etc., this is the way humans are used to divide time:
the SI unit for time is the second and prefixes allow to specify milliseconds etc. However for weeks and monthes, people use calendars.
When using calendars, people don’t use seconds, but days, monthes, and years. Hereby, a day is defined by the rotation of the earth around itself, and a year is defined by the rotation of the earth around the sun.
Regarding modern reforms of week length, that did not work and affected human’s health, it seems that weeks of seven days biologically fit the human’s requirements the best, as all cultures have a day where they make a pause, and it seems you need such a day at least every seventh day.
Cultures vary in which days of the week are designated the first and the last, though virtually all have Saturday, Sunday or Monday as the first day. The Geneva-based ISO standards organization uses Monday as the first day of the week in its ISO week date system through the international ISO 8601 standard.[a] Most of Europe and China consider Monday the first day of the week, most of North America and South Asia consider Sunday the first day, while Saturday is judged as the first day of the week in much of the Middle East and North Africa. Other regions are mixed, but typically observe either Sunday or Monday as the first day.[5] The Jewish week ends with nightfall on Saturday, at the conclusion of the Sabbath, following the Hebrew Bible in which God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Some Christians set their Sabbath to Sunday, so as not to coincide with Judaism[citation needed]. Muslims set their Sabbath to Friday because it was described as a sacred day of worship in the Quran.[6]
– Source: Week – Wikipedia
Also a month can be related to the rotation of the moon around the sun, so a week can be one fourth of a “moon”. Monthes are four weeks in many cultures, resulting in twelve monthes for a year in calendars.
A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, that is approximately as long as a natural orbital period of the Moon; the words month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept arose with the cycle of Moon phases; such lunar months (“lunations”) are synodic months and last approximately 29.53 days, making for roughly 12.37 such months in one Earth year. From excavated tally sticks, researchers have deduced that people counted days in relation to the Moon’s phases as early as the Paleolithic age. Synodic months, based on the Moon’s orbital period with respect to the Earth–Sun line, are still the basis of many calendars today, and are used to divide the year.
– Source: Month – Wikipedia
http://www.dozenalsociety.org.uk/.
A UK outfit so they cleary point the finger at the French for introducing the meter.
For me, Inches are good measurements above 1/16th inch, below that I’m with metric because i find imagining a “thou” of an inch tricky.
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