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Temperature Tutorial is a web-based tutorial about effects of temperature on dimensional measurements.

Temperature Tutorial
Slide 12

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Variations in Reported Values of the CTE

This table gives the CTE for AISI 1050 steel taken from three different sources. The CTE has been converted to ppm/°C, and the temperature ranges to °C as needed. Obviously the CTE changes with temperature, and this leads to different "average" values over different temperature ranges. Of course even the word "average" may be defined differently by the three sources.

The question is now, what is the CTE at 20 °C?

This particular example is one for which multiple, seemingly independent sources exist. For most gages we do not even have this much information.

Reference CTE T-Range CTE T-Range CTE T-Range
1 14.6 21-650        
2 11.5 20-100 13.5 25-200    
3 11.2 0-100 12.1 0-200 13.5 0-400
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Technical Inquiries: Ted Doiron, Group Leader
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Date Created: Monday, October 15, 2001
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 09, 2004