Review on 📏 Accurate Measurements with Anytime Tools Standard Reading Caliper by Benjamin Robinson

I love this 12" caliper but I'm afraid it needs to come back. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a sane way to reset the gear that drives the arms after it misses a rack tooth. The rail on calipers is usually shielded well enough, but not enough to completely prevent small chips from entering. And if the tool is used in a machine shop, it's guaranteed to pick up random chips. Then the gear may be missing a tooth or even more and the tool will not measure correctly, or a hard hit (e.g. from falling on a hard table) can loosen the gear. The chip has two fixes: The first (and easiest) fix is to loosen the thumbscrew and rotate the dial so that where the pointer is pointing, it reads zero. instead of pointing in a random direction. Move the gear away from the rack so it can be returned to the desired location. So how do I separate the gearbox from the steering rack? Some manufacturers have tools to poke wire into a small hole (some supply a tool, but a paper clip will do). The wire pushes the gear against the anti-backlash spring and disengages the gear from the rack, allowing the gear to move (after some fiddling) back to where it should be on the rack. Unfortunately, with this caliper, a simple dial rotation repair will not work as both hands cannot be reset at the same time. And a less simple repair isn't possible as there's no way to detach the gear from the rack to put it back in place. If I understand correctly, the official way to zero this caliper after missing a tooth or two is to lift the dial cover, retract the hands, and push them back to the zero position. It's too primitive for me - maybe suitable for blacksmith tools, but too rustic for my workshop. The occasional need to zero a caliper is simply a fact of life. It even happens to my fancy Mitutoyos - in the forty years I've been using them I've had to reset them maybe twice. The need for zeroing does not arise often, but when it does, it cannot be ignored. And the lack of a proper zeroing function makes the long-term usefulness of this 12-inch caliper questionable.