You hit the nail on the head ............'In the United States'...........
I have always used thousandth or thou, and I grew up in England. where the dimension was probably first used. However, it's kind of ironic, that in the US, the prefix 'mil' is used, since the _preferred_ SI units are all magnitudes of three... and hence why milli is used more often than deci or centi. Chris On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Dan <dan...@wolstenholme.net> wrote: > > > No, the correct terminology for 1/1000 of an inch is "mil". There's > countless PCB manufacturers who agree with me on this, so I'll take their > word on it. > > Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_(length) > > According to this, "mil" is the older term, and was only replaced in some > places by "thou" when the SI system came about, because of possible > confusion with millimeters. But "mil" is still in widespread use. From the > article: "In the United States, the mil/thou is still in use extensively in > certain industries such as in the manufacture of printed circuit boards > (PCBs) and for tolerance specifications on hydraulic cylinders." Apparently, > the PCB industry hasn't adopted "thou", since every time I look at some > Chinese PCB maker's website, they use mils. > > Dan > > --- In kicad-users@yahoogroups.com <kicad-users%40yahoogroups.com>, Chris > <fj1...@...> wrote: > > > > Actually, the correct terminology is Imperial units, not English. > > > > And mils is actually a unit of angle. > > > > the correct terminology for 1/1000 of an inch is thousandth or thou. > > > -- IBA #15631
