Micro-Hites are a great investment if you know how to use them. Thanks to the many different probes that can be used with the height gage, it can give your shop tons of accurate data about parts.

Video Transcript:

You can lie about how big your part is at the bar, but not in machining. With that said, I’m going to show you three tips on how to use three different probe types for your Micro-Hite (height gauge.) The first probe I’m going to show you is an offset ball end probe. The second will be a depth gauging probe, and the third will be an on-center probe.

First, we’re going to calibrate the offset ball end probe.

Now we’ll calibrate the depth probe.

The last step, we will calibrate our on-center probe. So that one’s all set.

Now that we’re calibrated, we’re going to set our zero on the table using the offset ball probe, and use that location to find the width and the location of this slot. This style of probe is nice for being able to set your zero off the table, to be able to reference that from one end of your part to different lengths along your part. These types of probes are the most versatile. Being able to zero off the table, you can check lengths of your part, and you can switch it up and make it a diameter checking tool as well.

With the next style gauge, the depth probe, we’re able to zero out on any flat surface. Here we will check the length of an OD groove, as well as the depth of this internal counterbore. This style of depth gauge works really well for checking the location and the width of internal and narrow external grooves.

Finally we have our on-center probe. These are very versatile probes, and while they can’t be zeroed out on the table, there’s many, many uses for them. Here I’ll demonstrate finding the high spot of a sphere to check it against the overall length of the part. The narrow tip of the probe is able to get into many spots that other probes simply can’t.

While there’s a large variety of probe types you can use in your Micro-Hite, the three we went over today are the ones you’ll most likely reach for the most.”