The Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE) develops the standards used for tools in the aerospace, automotive and commercial vehicle industries. Some standards use the traditional English system and others, the metric system. In some cases, tools such as socket sets are available in both sets of units. While converting between units is possible, it is best to have tools marked with the measurement system required for the specific job. Does this Spark an idea?
Traditional
The three common units for measuring distance in the traditional English system are the inch, foot and yard, where one yard equals three feet and one foot equals 12 inches. Automotive tools such as socket wrenches that use the traditional English system are known as standard sets and are marked in increments of inches such as one quarter, three-eighths or one-half inch.
Metric
The units of the metric system are established by the International System of Units (SI). The SI unit for distance is the meter, where prefixes denote multiples or fractions of a meter. For instance, a millimeter is one one-thousandth of a meter and a centimeter is one one-hundredth of a meter. Metric sets of automotive tools such as socket wrenches are marked in millimeters.
Conversion
Conversion between the standard and metric systems is straightforward. To convert from inches to millimeters multiply the number in inches by 25.4. To convert from millimeters, multiply the number in millimeters by 0.0394. However, while it is possible to convert between standard and metric units, tools matching the converted size may not exist.
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