It has been a long time now I wanted to write an article benchmarking swiss made quality products and Asian tools. as a foreword, my purpose is not to criticize Asian production (some of them are excellent), but to emphasize the general principle "you get for what you paid for". Swiss tools are worldwide known for their quality, and as a direct consequence for their price. But for most of us, it is sometime difficult to figure out what makes quality, at least until you can have one of those tools in your hand. People who had the opportunity to work with quality tools never come back to cheap ones. Until now I never saw any article explaining in practice what quality would mean, so this is why I decided to buy a standard chinese dial (on Ebay) and to compare it to a swiss one. I therefore bought a:

SHARS .030" Dial Test Indicator made in China ($35)

and benchmarked it to the closest model I could find:

COMPAC 245A made in Switzerland ($100).

This model is no longer for sale on my store, but if you are interested this one is quite close:
244 A Lever Type Dial Test Indicator, 0.03" 0.0005"

For this benchmark I've been requesting the advises of two engineers working in the metrology industry. Here are the results.

When you look at the plastic boxes, you immediately see the difference between the laser printed stickers on the Shars box and the stamped logo of the Compac box

 

The first impression you get when you open both boxes is good. Dials are nicely wrapped into a protective plastic bag:

 

But when you start to remove all the content of the boxes there you start to see the difference:

The COMPAC contains an instruction manual, and a real inspection certificate, i.e. a clear description of the object controlled (even the name of the controller), and values issued from the control compared to limit values

 

When you put both dials nearby, you clearly see the difference of manufacturing. While the COMPAC dial has well cut steel faces, the Shars body is completely covered with a kind of silverish painting. Maybe this is done to hide the fact that the body is not out of steel, but a cheaper/easier to manufacture metal.

 

The dials face are both good. One should notice that the Shars grip of the rotable dial is very sharp, and has been cut to the edge, which makes it very unpleasant to hold and manipulate. On the other side the grip of the COMPAC is nice and smooth. The COMPAC grip is made of steel, but he Shars is made of aluminum, you can therefore expect it to be less durable and more likely to take bumps.

 

When you look closely to the back of the Shars dial you will notice it makes some noise when you turn it. This means theta the tolerance between the dial and the rest of the body is very small. Over the time and use it will collect dust and grease, and sooner or later the rotable dial will get completely blocked. On the other side the COMPAC dial turns silently and very smoothly.

 

On the pictures bellow you will see that where the COMPAC has a nicely drilled hole, you will see a very badly worked surface on the Shars. You will see also on the Shars an additional dovetail, which is completely unusable since it is completely covered with painting.

 

While the COMPAC measuring insert is made of tungsten carbide ball tip, I would not expect the same of the Shars, which doesn't even have a perfectly spherical surface.

 

Shars use "out of the self" cross head screws, while COMPAC use industrial grade screws for fixing the plate on the main body.

 

The COMPAC serial number has been stamped on the main body, while the Shars was marked with a laser directly on the painting...how long will it last?

 

On the Compac Top and Back dovetails have been carefully milled, which is not the case of the Shars dovetails. Again silverish painting covers everything and it is impossible to fit on it the Fixing shank.

 

Looking at the fixing shank shows also clearly the difference in quality between the COMPAC and Shars model.

While the Shars shank's screw will directly push on the body of the dial, leaving marks over the time, the COMPAC shank will only be pushing on the dovetail rail.

 

Removing the cover of both dials gives us more detail about the quality of manufacturing. First of all COMPAC use 5 screws instead of 4 for Shars to fix the cover to the body.

Simple inspection shows that COMPAC mechanical parts are nicely machined and contains less components than Shars. The inside of the body in the Compac is clean and still contains the manufacture oil for the mechanism, while the Shars looks dirty and is filed of painting. All the pieces inside the COMPAC are made of steel, while Shars contains a mix of different materials from brass to plastic. It was easy dismantle (and rebuild) every part of the COMPAC dial, while I had to force and break some of the plastic holdings of the Shars to access to the inside of the body.

One important point to notice also is the COMPAC's cover which match exactly to the body of the dial. While not making it waterproof, it gives already a very good protection against any liquid. On the other side, you can see on the picture of the Shars, that although it new some painting has already in filtered the inside of the body...what will happen when some coolants gets inside?

 

On this part you clearly see the use of two different kind of springs between COMPAC and Shars. You can guess that the best but more expensive one belongs to COMPAC and the cheapest to Shars.

 

You will also see one the main differences between COMPAC and Shars: while the COMPAC's lever is mounted on ball bearings, giving very low measuring force, axial stability, and extra long life, the Shars lever is mounted only on metallic conical point. This will make the Shars lever much more sensitive to lateral displacements (and therefore accuracy), and much less durable over the time and use.

 

Finally the pivot of the COMPAC was much more harder to move than the Shars. This is important to because it makes the lever insensitive to bad positioning: you will not have to replace the pivot lever if by error you reach the end of the measurement.

Conclusion

With this article I showed you a couple of elements you should check on a dial to evaluate quality. In this article, I didn't benchmarked the measurements qualities of those dials, this will come soon in a next article. But I'm sure that the overall quality of any item is reflected in all the tiny manufacturing details. Let's take the screws as an example: if they are "out of the shelves" type this doesn't necessarily mean that the tool is creepy, but using industrial grade ones for sure will be the sign of a quality tool. As a final word, everybody have its own mind: some will rather like to buy 3 times an average dial and exchange it each time it breaks, and other's will stand for quality and directly go for the best models.

If you would like to buy a similar model follow the link:
244 A Lever Type Dial Test Indicator, 0.03" 0.0005"

See all the dials at Swiss Quality Discount