These Gargantuan Digital Calipers Actually Work
Matty Benedetto built these gargantuan digital calipers that are big enough to measure almost anything.
Every maker needs a set of digital calipers, even if they’re the $20 kind that real engineers and machinists scoff at. Unfortunately, all of those $20 calipers are 6” models and some things happen to be longer than 6”. To address that mismatch, Matty Benedetto of the Unnecessary Inventions YouTube channel built these gargantuan digital calipers that are big enough to measure almost anything.
Benedetto participated in this year’s YouTube Maker Secret Santa exchange and drew Austin Bradley. These ridiculously oversized digital calipers are Benedetto’s gift to Bradley.
This build was actually easier than you might except. The huge calipers display the measurement in inches on two scaled-up seven-segment displays (precision wasn’t a concern). An Arduino UNO R4 WiFi board measures the distance between the jaws using a ToF (Time-of-Flight) sensor.
Most of the mechanical parts were 3D-printed on ELEGOO OrangeStorm Giga and Bambu Lab H2D machines, with laser-cut acrylic panels for diffusing the display LEDs and for the scale. The markings on that scale were made on a sticker printer.
Now Bradley can measure especially big things to the nearest inch!