Metric VS. THe English System of Measurement

Just about daily we battle between using the Metric System of measurement and the English system of measurement. Some of our customers use only the Metric system while most still use the English system with a bit of Metric thrown in here and there. Let's explore the question of which came first as well as the bigger question; are those companies in the USA the only ones in the World that are still dragging their feet on this issue?

Going as far back in time as the story of Noah's ark, the lack of a yardstick was not a serious drawback. Most measuring was done by one craftsman completing one job at a time, rather than assembling a number of articles piece-meal to be assembled later. It didn't make much difference how accurate the measuring sticks were or even how long they were. Generally, it doesn't make much difference how long a mile, a yard a meter or an inch are or how heavy a pound or an ounce is. What is really important is that everyone means the same thing when referring to each unit of measurement. Measurements must be standard to mean the same thing to everyone. Imagine your business with no way to measure the product...

The First Yard
When the Roman Empire passed into history about six hundred years after the time of Christ, Europe drifted into the Dark Ages. For six or seven hundred years mankind generally made little progress with regard to standardizing measurement. Sometime after the Magna Carta was signed in the Thirteenth Century, King Edward I of England took a step forward. He ordered a permanent measuring stick made of iron to serve as a master standard yardstick for the entire kingdom. This master yardstick was called the "iron ulna", after the bone of the forearm, and it was standardized as the length of a yard, very close to the length of our present-day yard. King Edward realized that constancy and permanence were the key to any standard. He also decreed that the foot measure should be one-third the length of the yard, and the inch one thirty-sixth. King Edward II, in 1324, reverted back to the seed concept of the ancients and passed a statute that "three barleycorns, round and dry," make an inch. However, seeds as well as fingers and feet were no match for a world that soon was to emerge from the ignorance and unrefined practices of the Dark Ages.

The First Meter
As the scientists were experimenting in their laboratories, practical tradesmen were making themselves permanent standards. In 1793, during Napoleon's time, the French government adopted a new system of standards called the metric system, based on what they called the meter. The meter was supposed to be one tenth-millionth the length of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator when measured on a straight line running along the surface of the earth through Paris. With the meter now determined as the basis of the metric system, other linear units of the system were set up in decimal ratios with the meter. With this system, all units are in multiples of ten: ten decimeters in a meter, a hundred centimeters in a meter, and a thousand millimeters in a meter. In the other direction, there are ten meters in a dekameter, a hundred meters in a hectometer, and a thousand meters in a kilometer. Compared to the yardstick, the meter is just a little longer: 39.37 inches long.

The French government thought it had an infallible system of weights and measures that would be easy to use and would be embraced by everyone. But people were accustomed to thinking in terms of yards, inches, pounds and quarts. At first the new meter as a measure of length proved confusing. Most Frenchmen thought in the old familiar terms, doing some mental arithmetic to convert one quantity into another and, after nineteen years, Napoleon finally was forced to renounce the metric system. However, in 1837, France again went back to the meter, this time for good, hoping to make it universal throughout the world.

While France was evolving the metric system, England also was setting up a more scientifically accurate determination of the yard. Where the French relied on the assumed constancy of the earth's size as a basis for the permanency of their standards, the British turned to the measured beat of the pendulum. Galileo already had learned the secrets of a pendulum. He found that the length of time it took for a pendulum to complete a swing depended upon the length of the pendulum itself. The longer the pendulum, the slower it swung. He also found that a pendulum a little over 39 inches long would swing through its arc in exactly one second. Since a pendulum always behaves exactly the same way under the same conditions, here was another unchanging distance upon which to base a standard measurement.

In 1824, the English Parliament legalized a new standard yard which had been made in 1760. It was a brass bar containing a gold button near each end. A dot was engraved in each of these two buttons. These two dots were spaced exactly 1 yard apart. The same act that legalized this bar as the standard for England also made the provision that, in the event it was lost or destroyed, it should be replaced using the pendulum method to determine its length. A few years later, copies of both the English yard and the French meter standards were brought to the United States. The English system of measuring was almost universally adopted in the United States.

In spite of repeated requests in Congress, there was no legal length standard in the U.S. until 1832. More or less authentic copies of the British copies of the yard were used as length prototypes. In 1832, the Treasury Department decided to admit as a legal Yard the distance between the lines 27 and 63 of a certain bronze bar, 82 inches in length, bought in 1813 in England for the Federal Survey Department. When the British yard bar, which was destroyed in 1834, was replaced in 1855, a new bronze copy No. 11 was sent to the United States which became the legal American Yard Standard.

Converting the United States
Since the mid nineteenth century the United States has made several attempts at converting over to the World Standard. On May 20, 1875 the United States became a charter member of the metric club, having signed the original document (The Treaty of the Meter), in Paris. They were the only English-speaking nation to do so. Since then, 48 nations have signed this treaty, including all the major industrialized countries. In 1975 the US Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act and although made with good intentions, the Treaties, Acts, established Institutes, and passed legislation have yet to push through the change.

To answer the second half of the question - it is not true that the US remains the last holdout. While the rest of the world is pretty much standardized on the metric system of measurements, when it comes to mandatory use, the United States has company in its foot dragging. Great Britain, Liberia and Burma are right there along with the United States. Some international organizations have threatened to restrict U.S. imports that do not conform to metric standards and rather than trying to maintain dual inventories for domestic and foreign markets, a number of U.S. corporations have chosen to go metric. Some Motor vehicles, farm machinery, and computer equipment are now manufactured to metric specifications. We have a feeling that you will be seeing more and more of your customers in the US using the Metric system in their purchases with you as their customers make more and more original specifications in Metric.

One More Important Thing To Know: SI is the abbreviation for the Système International d'Unités, the modernized version of the metric system that most nations have agreed to use. It defines the length of a Meter as the distance light will travel in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. Talk about calibrating your measuring tools!

Thanks goes to Cool Fire Technology for the reprint permission on much of the History contained here.

Written By Mark Batson Baril

Diecutting Food

Written by Mark Batson Baril

SO - YOU WANT TO DIE CUT WHAT? It never stops amazing me how many different products are cut with dies and specialty cutting processes. Most recently I have been reminded that there are many companies out there that need to cut food as part of their production. Sometimes it's just slitting, slicing or chopping and sometimes a manufacturer will want to produce a product in a shape that cannot be extruded or made in a mold. In this case, we as die cutters, die makers, and specialty cutters are called upon to step up to the oven and take a shot at the unusual. Years ago I built some tooling that was to be used for cutting brownies into that typical rectangular shape brownies come in. Instead of slitting the shapes in two directions after the sheet of goods was baked, the manufacturer wanted to cut the entire sheet of cooked goods in one shot as it passed down the line. They wanted a very uniform size and wanted to trim the baked edges off so everyone got exactly the same thing. As it happened, we made no effort to look into any type of government regulations or standard industry practices that would help us figure out what materials to use. We had a couple of meetings, used a bit of common sense, and came up with a very basic steel rule die that used solid stainless steel blades and a plastic base that was approved for medical applications by a US government agency (good enough for medical it must be good enough for food, right?). Ejection was handled with a center hole in each cavity that allowed a stainless stripper plate to be activated from the back of the tool. Everything was washable, would resist rusting, corroding, and no part of the tool could flake away and become part of the food. We built a great tool and everything worked well. In retrospect, we probably should have made the tool with no base and welded everything together so it would have been easier to wash, or better yet we should have passed the whole project onto someone that really knew the business. Still the question remains with me today, did we build tooling that met the standards?

All around the world governments have set-up standards that food manufacturers must adhere to. Deep down, I think this is what we all worry about when we get into making tools, or processing foods, and rightly so. In the US we have the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) that tells us how to produce things when it comes to foods - they police it too… In Europe there are as many regulators as there are countries and yet with the growing closeness of European countries an entity called The European Commission is taking more control of these matters. In China, the Ministry of Health plays a big part in who does what and how. From Ministries of Health to Food Inspection Agencies around the world, everyone has got to follow some sort of rule when they process foods. There are even cooperative agreements set-up between countries/agencies to help manage the production of food that will be imported/exported between them. All in all it can become a very complex task to take on compliance with these government regulations.

"I'm just a diemaker" you say! Well we've got to start somewhere and I'll tell you that it's quite a relief to find that a government agency (the FDA is easiest for me to access and has a pretty decent web site) uses at least a little common sense when it comes to the equipment used for cutting food. Here are some excerpts from:
The FDA Code of Federal Regulations- Title 21, Volume 2 - TITLE 21 -- Food And Drugs - Chapter I -- Food And Drug Administration, Department Of Health And Human Services - Part 110--Current Good Manufacturing Practice In Manufacturing, Packing, Or Holding Human Food.

Sec. 110.20 Plant and grounds.
(a) General maintenance. Buildings, fixtures, and other physical facilities of the plant shall be maintained in a sanitary condition and shall be kept in repair sufficient to prevent food from becoming adulterated within the meaning of the act. Cleaning and sanitizing of utensils and equipment shall be conducted in a manner that protects against contamination of food, food-contact surfaces, or food-packaging materials.

Sec. 110.40 Equipment and utensils - (This Includes the Dies and Presses)
(a) All plant equipment and utensils shall be so designed and of such material and workmanship as to be adequately cleanable, and shall be properly maintained. The design, construction, and use of equipment and utensils shall preclude the adulteration of food with lubricants, fuel, metal fragments, contaminated water, or any other contaminants. All equipment should be so installed and maintained as to facilitate the cleaning of the equipment and of all adjacent spaces. Food-contact surfaces shall be corrosion-resistant when in contact with food. They shall be made of nontoxic materials and designed to withstand the environment of their intended use and the action of food, and, if applicable, cleaning compounds and sanitizing agents. Food-contact surfaces shall be maintained to protect food from being contaminated by any source, including unlawful indirect food additives.
(b) Seams on food-contact surfaces shall be smoothly bonded or maintained so as to minimize accumulation of food particles, dirt, and organic matter and thus minimize the opportunity for growth of microorganisms.

Sec. 110.80 Processes and controls.
(10) Mechanical manufacturing steps such as washing, peeling, trimming, cutting, sorting and inspecting, mashing, dewatering, cooling, shredding, extruding, drying, whipping, defatting, and forming shall be performed so as to protect food against contamination. Compliance with this requirement may be accomplished by providing adequate physical protection of food from contaminants that may drip, drain, or be drawn into the food. Protection may be provided by adequate cleaning and sanitizing of all food-contact surfaces, and by using time and temperature controls at and between each manufacturing step.

Wow - Did you actually read all that? Those are three minor sections of a seventeen page document that outlines the basics you need to know to cut food or to build tooling that will cut food in the US. You'll have to go to another document for some of the definitions of some of those sections. All in all though I must say that most of it is common sense and quite achievable within most diemaking shops and with many die cutting machines. If you are not in the US you may find that the rules to follow are more stringent or less stringent. Putting it all together as one neat, consistently reproducible manufacturing process is the trick. There are consultants as well as people from within your various government agencies that can help in setting up and maintaining a proper process.

So to answer the question of whether or not we built tooling that met the standards - I would say yes we did. (That's a load off my mind!) In fact, if the company that was using the tooling was following the rules, they would have had a person in charge of making sure we were in compliance and if there had been a problem, we would have heard about it. And if they were somehow out of line with this way of thinking, I'm sure the Food Police would have caught up with the whole bunch of us.

Of course none of this covers the very related area of diecutting items that will come into direct contact with foods. Labels, packaging, tags, etc….. all fall into this category and although the manufacturing of these will carry somewhat the same rules and regulations that actual food cutting does, the big added factor to watch out for is the type of material that you are incorporating. Papers, plastics, inks, coatings, glues, etc….. are all controlled under many government agencies.

Good luck and I hope this gets anyone interested in die cutting food, or making tools for the same, started in the right direction and further away from that anxious feeling that comes with dealing with government regulations.

Please contact Cut Smart if you would like more information on this subject.