A pox on the fly cutter!

[Liv2fish2]

A "mil" is also common terminology for applying paint thicknesses
Just my 2 cents worth!

[DareBee]

Thanks guys - you have sated my curiosity

[Ubarch]

I think I picked up 'mil' the same way ahren did; my background is EE and PCB trace width is marked in mils. I'm trying to absorb the lingo.

Yeah, the Sherline isn't the mightiest of tools, but it's what I have. It's kind of neat, actually; the machine is part of a miniature shop that somebody was trying to put together years ago (I think they just bought most of the Sherline catalog). It was sitting there at work, absolutely untouched, until I asked if I could use it. I made a Stirling engine over a couple months after work, and now I'm being paid to make research prototypes.

I'll tell you what, though; I've been saving up for the home system for a year or so now, and I'd rather make the bulk of my mistakes on that thing before I invest thousands of dollars of my own cash.

[traveler]

My nickels worth about the term "mil". we used the term when rebuilding steam turbines. IE, 1 mil = 1 thousands of an inch. I looked this up early in my millwright career. It was orginally used as a wire gage designation for jewelry.

[swarfmaker]

Here's my tu'pennys worth on the subject here on the other side of the pond,
one day working in good ole imperial next day in metric Ye gods 5 mil in metric is approx .2" big confusion if someone asked for another 5 mil off!!!!
However did work for one turbine manufacturer who used ,001 (pronounced comma 001) for metric.
or .001 (pronounced point 001) for imperial to differentiate between both systems, and inspectors and engineers knew exactly which one they were talking about.

[sbrpollock]

"mil"

From the prefix: "milli" which indicates one THOUSANDTH of something.

As in:

"milli-amp" which equals one THOUSANDTH of an amp,

"milli-volt" which equals one THOUSANDTH of a volt,

and of course,

"milli-meter" which equals one THOUSANDTH of a meter!

A "milli-inch" would of course equal one THOUSANDTH of an inch!