Digital Angle Finder

Just had a browse round LIDL while the good lady did some shopping. In the tool section I noticed that they were selling Digital Angle Finder at £9-99 so bought one to see how good or bad it is; well could always confine it to the woodworking box if really bad. Having set it at 0 deg on a plane surface I used a set of ground angle blocks and checked it at various angles from 0 to 90 degrees and was surprised at the results, they are:

• Angle Block      Actual Reading
• 0                       0.0 deg
• 10                     10.1
• 15                     15.1
• 20                     20.0
• 25                     25.0
• 30                     30.1
• 45                     45.0
• 60                     60.1
• 90                     90.0

Needless to say I am pleased with my spend of £9-99 and won't be consigning the Digital Angle Finder to the woodwork box

Martin W

Edited By Martin W on 10/03/2017 16:55:07

Martin,

326 views without any comment

Please let me correct that; by thanking you, for taking the trouble to share the results of your check.

MichaelG.

Thank you for the tip. Wife sent to get one😀!

Is the sharpener any good? Thinking masonary drills and diy stuff rather than my best machine kit.

Matthew

My thanks as well, I'd never considered a Digital Angle Finder would be that accurate, no good reason for thinking that as I use a digital vernier, perhaps it's memories of using trig' tables at school, I'll buy one now.

John

I surprised your angle blocks are that far out

Must see if our Lidl has any left!

Neil

I did some similar tests on a Wixey one a while back, reported somewhere on the forum. It gave very similar results, I guess all of these must use similar sensors so not surprising I suppose. If they are the same as in mobile phones, they have no moving parts being just accelerometers. They are remarkably good.

May get one of those for the quick "Ruff n Ready" set ups. I have an old Starrett plastic bodied one with a swinging needle pointer that is ready to be retired.

.

John,

May be mistaken, but; I think the Lidl device under discussion is this one:

**LINK**

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dRprgDuOKA0

MichaelG.

I've no idea how accurate my Moore & Wright one is but it's been very useful for what I do.

Matthew

Think I shall be looking for an angle gauge too.

Got the drill sharpener last time round and was very much underwhelmed.

Ill start a new thread with details.

Clive.

Michael G

Yes that's the Digital Angle Finder I was referring to, I should have been more specific and given details so as to avoid any confusion. Thanks for clarifying it.

Martin W

PS

Neil, I was surprised that my angle blocks were that good . Cheers

Edited By Martin W on 11/03/2017 14:28:22

I have an identical-looking one from way back. Hope yours is better than mine in that I have to leave the battery out between uses or it goes dead (like the cheep calipers)

Edited By Bandersnatch on 11/03/2017 18:32:57

Just bought the last one in local branches. Looks OK, will be better than my cheap protractor at any rate

Went in yesterday to get one of their dampness meters and picked one up also. Rude not to at the price.

The steel blades aren't well finished, I had to stone the corners a bit to make it more pleasant (=bearable) to handle.

I thought I would see how accurately I could estimate angles. I set 30 degrees by eye and it read 29.5, 60 degrees I managed 59.0 and 90 degrees 90.2. A bit disappointed by the last one as humans are very good at estimating right angles.

Neil

I would double check the angle blocks. I would have expected the digital angle gauge errors to be incremental.

Angle Blocks are intended for production and inspection work and are specified to the following;

• Hardness HRC52-58
• Angular Accuracy: ± 0.0003”

So I suspect that there is little wrong with them; looking at the results the indicated error appears to be at intervals of about 15 deg i.e 15, 30, 60 deg. While at 0, 45, 90 deg the angle finder agrees with the blocks. This may be pure coincidence or down to me not taking enough care when making the measurement. That said it is well within the quoted tolerance and will certainly do me for setting or measuring less critical angles. For the money they are a good bit of kit.

Neil, I agree with what you say about the edges being a not well finished and like you I have relieved the edges to make it more comfortable to use.

Martin w

I have had a similar "box of angles" for several years and it gets used a lot. For the stuff I use it for the accuracy is fine, I did a similar test/check against some angle blocks, and got similar results, as far as I can remember. I'm slightly surprised at myself for not keeping any notes, but I can remember thinking "...that's close enough for me...".

cheers

Bill

Mathew Reed. I bought a drill grinder from Lidl, because it was only £15.00. It says it can grind drills from 3mm dia to 10mm. I wanted it to grind small drills.

Here is a report. The main body construction is adequate. It comes with 3 detachable 'units' for use as a knife sharpener, a chisel grinder, and drill sharpener. The chisel grinder works ok and gives a good square edge to the chisel prior to honing, it has an adjustable angle table. The drill grinder is interesting. The drill is secured along a vee groove using a thumb nut, and so the centre line of the drill changes ,(relative to the fixed rest on the grinder), depending upon the dia. This is a big dis-advantage. As the construction of the holder is only plastic there is a lot of un measurable movement which leads to very poor results on small drills. Aligning the drill ready for re-grind using the instructions and stops on the unit is really not very good and if you don't know how to grind a drill to start with, the unit, in my opinion, would be un usable. However I got good results when grinding a 10mm drill, which is the interesting bit. For £15.00 you get the opportunity to reverse engineer the drill grinding unit and make it accurately from steel, improve the drill alignment system and end up with a really good workshop project and a drill grinder that you could trust. As an off the shelf drill grinder it is of little use,in my opinion, but then I don't have a problem grinding drills off-hand. Hope this has been of some use. Roy M.

The angle gauge appears to use a capacitative rotary encoder, which would make any errors random and not cumulative.

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 15/03/2017 09:45:13