I am in the automotive industry and a mill is one millimeter or .039″. When I read something being applied with 10 mills thickness, how thick is it, and what is the standard for the housing industry in inches or millimeters?
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mil is 1/1000
mil in imperial units is .001" or a "thou"
Never heard of mill being used to describe millimeter, but I am from Canada.
Virtually everything in the US building trades is Imperial units (feet/inches/pounds/gallons/ounces).
A "mil" is one thousandth of an inch (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mil). This term is commonly used to describe the thickness of coatings, etc.
mill
Thanks for clearing this up...
Mill is short for millimeter, in the automotive world, when you are speaking about thickness or distance.
Never Heard That...
... but the accepted abbreviation for millimeter(s) is mm. I've never been "in the automotive world" so I can see how you're confused by this.
As others have stated, common understanding of mil in our Imperial system is understood to mean 0.001".
You are correct-"mm" is the abbreviation for millimeters when written. When spoken it can become "mills" if they don't want to say millimeters- kind of a verbal shorthand.
I never heard mil to mean anything but 0.001 inch. That other thing is just a number "10'", "12" etc and the answer to the next question would be "That commie metric <jobsite word>"
WRONG- Everyone!
A 'mil' is 1/1000 of an INCH. There's nothing metric about it. Therefore, a sheet of plastic 4 mils thick is 4/1000 of an INCH thick.
By comparison, about the smallest you can see, with good eyes and better light, is 1/100 of an inch ... 10 mils ... or, as the printers call it, a 'point.' 12 point type is 12/100" tall.
1/1000 of a millimeter is a MICRON.
Reno, why do you say that "everyone" is wrong? Only brown501 said that he knew "mill" (with two Ls) to be short for millimeter, in the auto industry.
catmandeux said : mil in imperial units is .001" or a "thou"
I said : A "mil" is one thousandth of an inch
There were no other answers, prior to your comment.
In the automotive world, engineers love to speak in acronyms, sort of a verbal texting if you will. If they can shorten a word, they generally will. I am in the sheet metal forming, plastic injection molding, metal removal end of the business. If I was referring to, let's say, a plastic bracket that had a wall thickness of 2.5mm, I would say that the wall is "2.5 mills thick". And it would be understood that I was referring to millimeters, not inches.
By the way, inches fell out of favor in my end of the automotive world, with the exception of coatings, about 30+ years ago. If you have worked on your car or anything lately, you will have a hard time finding a bolt or nut that is in inches.
Dimensionally speaking, everything is converted to millimeters if it is in inches. Back in the day, during the conversion from inchs to millimeters , if you were reading a blueprint the dimension would have been in inchs with the metric equivalent in parenthesis next to the inch dimension. Now all dimensions are in metric. Although I sometimes still convert millimeters back to inchs in my mind when looking at a dimension or measuring something.
This whole thing started when I was in a discussion with a tile guy about how thick a waterproof coating should be applied to a shower wall. I was confused when he was talking about 3-4 mills thick. All I could think of was that he wanted a coating that was over an 1/8 of an inch thick!. Hence, the reason for this question from you learned followers of Fine Homebuilding.
Now, if I were in the coatings end of the automotive business, paint, then my dialogue would be different and I would know and be correctly refering to a "Mil" as a thousand of an inch.
So... now I know and thanks all for the discussion.
Tomorrow We'll Discuss ...
.... the dram, the cord, the bit, and why an ounce of lead weighs more than an ounce of gold.
Why?
Which produces more BTUs , a
Which produces more BTUs, a ton of coal in the USA, or a ton of coal in the UK?
A ton of coal in the UK because the government will let them burn it there.
I believe it's a "tonne" in
I believe it's a "tonne" in the UK, which is a metric ton -- 2204.62 pounds. Of course, all of the good coal in the UK was burned 100 years ago and all that's left is carp.
Almost right, but still wrong.
Tonne is a metric ton 1,000 kg (2,204.623 lb), UK ton is a gross ton, 2,240 lbs, USA ton is a net ton, of course 2000 lbs.
Measurement systems are frustrating things.
Ok
Then answer me this.
"she was built like a brick shit house"
?
... in a high wind.
Overbuilt, good looking, and top heavy, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Mills
Good question. I'm Canadian (technically metric)..... as a cabinetmaker working In a shop, 'mills' to me would be millimeters and as most of the gear and all the hardware was set up for metric, that would be the most common way to do it. In CNC work sometimes we would be working in Imperial and then 1/1000" would be a 'thou' rather than a mill. Coatings would be the only place I can think of where 'mills' would be used as a portion of an inch.
Note that there's a difference between "mils" and "mills". The imperial measure "mil" is not an abbreviation.
I know.... I was going by pronunciation: if someone says "mills" (phoneticially) to me in a shop, it depends on the contexthow I interpret it. If we are talking about cabinet parts, 'mills" means millimeters. If it is in the paint room, it's coating thickness.
mills
Thank you, Adrian, well put. You see why I my question was raised in the first place.
Different trades, different terminologies.
A printer's point is nominally 1/72 of an inch, so 12-point type is 1/6th of an inch.
Not Quite
I 'determined' the size of a 'point' some years ago, long before there was an internent or Wikipedia. I printed something using the largest type available to me - 98 point - and measured the height of the letters - which were just a whisker under 1". Soon after, I saw printed references that supported my belief that 100 points = 1 inch. I believe that Machinery's Handbook was the source of my assertion that 1/100 of an inch is the smallest increment people with good eyesight can discern, in good light.
Now, along comes Wikipedia- and it is obvious that wigit has read the introduction to the Wiki article. Reading further down the article, though, you find this statement: "the point size does not necessarily correspond to any measurement of the size of the letters on the printed page."
WTH?
So, I have absolutely no idea WHAT I measured, or WHY changing the font size just happens to correspond to changes in the appearance of the letters. After all the precision techno-babble, it appears a 'point' can be anything you like, as long as you use the proper typeface.
UGH!
I don't get it. What's the point of discussing points?
It seems pointless to me too.
Sheet metal.
Steel thickness is measured in gague.
Aluminum thickness is measured in mils.
Copper thickness is measured in ounces.
Go figure.
And
a Michigan bankroll is measured in how many ones are on the inside.