VIDEO: TOOLING UP: The Touchscreen Indicator You’ve Been Waiting For

MIKE INGMAN: There's a lot new here that you don't see in other tools. It's just a big jump forward it’s kind of going from a flip phone to a, tablet type of, environment where you can touch the screen and you can get it to go wherever you want it to go, quickly and easily compared to our other older tools that all had buttons and the old seven segment LCDs.

Now you're able to touch the screen and you can jump around however you want.

Narrator: This video is brought to you by Starrett. Trust is in the name. If you're looking for real world insights, tips from leading industry experts, the latest trends in products and technology, you've come to the right place. From MSC Industrial Supply, this is Tooling Up.

TONI NEARY: Hello and welcome to Tooling Up. I'm your host, Toni Neary, and I'm so glad that you've joined us here today. Before we get started with our guest, we need to take care of a little bit of business. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and click the like and subscribe buttons and you'll be the first to know about any new episodes.

All right, everybody subscribed? Awesome. Today I'm excited to be talking about the next generation of precision measurement tools with Mike Ingman. Mike is the Director of Research and Development at Starrett. Mike, thanks for joining us. And welcome to Tooling Up.

MIKE INGMAN: Thanks for having me.

TONI NEARY: And before we jump in, I find it amazing that you've been with Starrett for 24 years. I'm sure you've seen a lot of changes in your time there.

MIKE INGMAN: Quite a few, quite a few, yes.

TONI NEARY: Tell us a little bit about your background. And how did you end up at Starrett?

MIKE INGMAN: Sure. I started off as a mechanical engineer working for a company designing spacesuits for NASA and the Air Force, and I then I came here to Starrett in the year 2000. I worked my way through the drafting department, then I came over to this division, which is the Advanced Technology Division. We designed the electronic calipers, indicators, micrometers, all the newest electronic tools that you see from Starrett have been designed mostly by me and one or two other people in mechanical engineering for the last 20 plus years.

TONI NEARY: And it sounds pretty fascinating, right? Spacesuits in the year 2000 starts to give me all the sci-fi chills, but tell me a little bit about your most satisfying development in the time that you've been there over the last 24 years.

MIKE INGMAN: The most satisfying one is the one that we're just completing right now, which is our new W4900 indicator. It's a touchscreen with a bunch of features that make it easier for the customer to use. It's a big jump forward for us.

TONI NEARY: That's amazing. I mean, Starrett’s been known as a world's greatest tool maker for a very long time, and it seems like the new W4900-1 touchscreen indicator really kind of lives up to that. If you want to learn more about Starrett go back to Season 3 and check out episode 22. But let's talk more about the indicator.

You built this from scratch?

MIKE INGMAN: We did, we did this started probably the idea of it started about 20 years ago, but the technology for it wasn't quite ready yet. We needed some things to come a little bit further that were out of our control. And finally, about four or five years ago, it was where we wanted it to be. So we started our design and mostly 100% actually engineered here in Starrett.

TONI NEARY: And I think, you know, again, we need to talk about the ease of use, because I think the transition from a flip phone to a smartphone, right, could be a little bit scary. But talk about the transition to using this new technology.

MIKE INGMAN: Well, the transition is really great because we were able to do things that you can't do with a button. We can only do so much with a button where you have to hit a combination of this button and that button and hold, press and hold that button, and then you can get into this kind of a feature.

Now you can just touch the screen. It'll bring you directly where you want to. You can touch a button. You can make quick adjustments and then accept it without having to really pull out a user manual, which the older tools made you do.

TONI NEARY: Fantastic and I think, you know, I love to nerd out on the technology. And I actually got to see a sneak preview of this. Let's talk about what makes it so special, because I think it's almost a laundry list, right?

MIKE INGMAN: It is. There's a lot new here that you don't see in other tools. We have the ability to have user preferences. So if you wanted to set the tool up for yourself, you can do that and you can save it. And the next person that comes up to use it can create a new one. You can do up to 10 of these.

So once you've set the tool up, you can really do it back and forth from one profile to another in a few seconds.

TONI NEARY: Well, it sounds like it's memory is already better than mine is, but let's talk about precision. How precise is it?

MIKE INGMAN: This is accurate to 50 millionths of an inch or one micron, depending if you like metric or imperial measurements. That's really, you can actually dumb it down a little bit if that's the right word for it, where you can, you know, go from 1,000th, one tenth, 50 millionths. You have four different choices for resolutions.

TONI NEARY: And so you can lock all of those and you can create your user settings. So if there's a component that you're measuring pretty consistently, you can just hit a button and roll right back to that setting and be ready to measure?

MIKE INGMAN: Absolutely. Yes you can.

TONI NEARY: I love that. Simple is always good. And then analog digital readouts. How does that compare with this new indicator?

MIKE INGMAN: This is actually something you don't see on other indicators where you have an analog and a digital together, at least not the way we've done it. When you look at the analog version of it, you see a dial like you would see on our mechanical dial screens.

TONI NEARY: And I think you've thought about so much. But as soon as I start to hear about tech, I don't know if anybody else has ever dropped their phone. But how fragile is this technology? Because it seems like, okay, you've got the touchscreen, you have all the, you know, this high, high precision. How fragile is this device?

MIKE INGMAN: I wouldn't call it fragile. I know people look at a tool like this and they say it's got a nice, pretty display, and they think like a phone, if you drop it, it's probably done. But this tool has been through a ton of testing with drop testing, impact testing, environmental testing. It's IP67 rated. It's got Gorilla Glass in the front.

We've actually hit it. I wouldn't recommend it, but we've hit it with a hammer to see if we could break it and we didn't. So we're pretty happy with how rugged it is.

TONI NEARY: Well, and I think that's an important factor when you're dealing with different cutting fluids and people having material on their fingers that it's really not going to affect the performance of the device as well. Right?

MIKE INGMAN: No, it's designed for that kind of use. So it showed no problems.

TONI NEARY: Perfect. Well, I love the fact that it looks delicate, but it sounds kind of tough. I mean, that sounds maybe just a little familiar to me, but one thing that I don't want to skip over is where can you get this brand new indicator, the W4900-1? I love saying that because it makes me feel like I'm kind of on the cutting edge of all of this, but where can they get this?

MIKE INGMAN: Right now you can get it from July 1st through October 1st exclusively with MSC.

TONI NEARY: We love to hear that. Mike, anything else that we haven't talked about about this amazing development? I have to applaud you for your foresight for coming up with this 20 years ago and now bringing it to the market. It seems like it's really going to be a cut above the rest.

MIKE INGMAN: Well, for wrap up, I'd like to say that it wasn't completely my idea at the beginning. It was actually our owner, Doug Starrett’s idea. This was his brainchild many years ago, and we're happy to finally give it to him.

TONI NEARY: Mike, I cannot thank you enough for your time today and your passion behind getting this project together. I love to see that Starrett is still raising the bar after 144 years in business.

MIKE INGMAN: Thank you and thanks for having me on.

TONI NEARY: It was great hanging out with Mike today. I love nerding out on all of this technology. And if you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did, make sure that you go ahead and subscribe and like so you don't miss any of our upcoming conversations. To find out more about the W4900-1 touch screen indicator, visit www.mscdirect.com/starrett-indicator.

Thanks and we'll see you next time on Tooling Up.

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the Tooling Up Video playlist to hear tips that can take your company to the next level, and subscribe to our channel so you won't miss out.