Tech Summary
How does it work?
The !nstrumenTool magnetic caliper has been designed for measuring thicknesses of wooden plates on musical instruments. If used on a completed instrument these measurements would include the layer(s) of varnish on the wood surface.
And…it should work fine on nearly any non-ferromagnetic material (ie. nearly anything except steel, although… some grades of stainless steel are non-ferromagnetic and would be fine). So you could measure the thickness of a piece of glass, plastic, ceramic, wood, aluminium or copper as long as the two surfaces of the material are near parallel and it is not thicker than the maximum tolerated by the !nstrumenTool. The two calibration ranges built into the !nstrumenTool and which will be officially supported currently allow a total range of 1 to 10mm. It helps if the material can be positioned so that the !nstrumenTool magnetic caliper is being used either with the tip pointing straight down or straight up – or as near to vertical as practical to avoid errors due to the action of gravity pulling the target ball “off-axis”. Most of the time it will be more convenient to use the tool with probe tip down and display up.
The !nstrumenTool is designed to operate within the thickness range 1 to 10 mm and to read accurately to the nearest 0.1mm. However, the user must be familiar with proper calibration and usage practices in order to reduce risk of inaccurate measurements. A helpful user manual will be provided, as will online tutorial videos. Even with this supplied documentation we recommend getting involved in the user forums (a password will be provided with your !nstrumenTool).