How thick is 20 mil?

Answer 1

According to Answers.com, a mil is: "A unit of length equal to one thousandth (10-3) of an inch (0.0254 millimeter), used, for example, to specify the diameter of wire or the thickness of materials sold in sheets." So; 20 mil = 20 thousandths of an inch = 0.020 inches Or; 20 x 0.0254 millimeters = 0.508 millimeters = 0.05 cm But... According to another source there is more to the story: "All papers are measured in two ways. One is referred to as the paper weight, the other is the actual thickness of the paper. Paper weight is generally measured in 'grams per square meter' (gsm). Paper thickness is measured in 'mils' which is short for thousandths of an inch. Paper weight and paper thickness often go hand in hand, BUT because some papers are denser than others they may be heavier than a similar thickness paper. For example, two manufacturers may list a weight of 300gsm, but the papers may have a different thickness because they have different densities.

Paper thickness is generally listed as 10mil or 15.5mil and this is equivalent to .010 inches or .0155 inches respectively. To give this some perspective, a human hair is only 2 mils. This is measured with a digital micrometer." This from: http://support.colorvision.ch/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=178