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GD&T is it a philosophy 5

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fsincox

Aerospace
Aug 1, 2002
1,261
I am interested in hearing the different points of view on your philosophy to GD&T.
As new draftsman we had always been told “you can’t use bolt circles, only co-ordinates” and “don’t dimension from centerlines, only edges” I suspect these are a lot like the caliper guys of today. When I was first trained in Y14.5-1982 in 1987 I found it a very liberating. The philosophy I was told was if it did not violate the basic rules or is not prohibited by the standard it was OK, Notes on drawings were not desired because of language barriers, but in extreme cases, you may need to supplement with a note to explain what you intend. The sense I got was it was a tool kit to be used and the simplistic examples in the text were just that, period. The book certainly did not explore the limits of what can be done it was more of a universal language that would be built upon as languages do. English, for example, has had words like computer and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing added to it (my MS word still thinks tolerancing is not a word or is misspelled). We all know it is a word.
In my first job AGDT (After GD&T Training) I worked with a lot of machines and a lot of dowels patterns that people always wanted located to unimportant edges (“the from the edge guys”, always 2 dowels in case some don’t know), I said: “fine, we have this new tool called composite position tolerancing that was perfect for that”. Eventually, the question was asked: “now, can we put an orientation on the centerline between the dowels to refine for orientation”. “Not in the ANSI world”, I said, “this is explicitly prohibited”, if we were ISO well life would have been easy. I was told the committee was working on just that issue, and, the restatement of secondary datums in a composite position tolerance would do just that. We were also instructed that since the standard did not actually show it we may want to add a flagnote to explain what we meant. This practice is part of the standard now and since Y14.5-1994 an accepted practice, some apparently argued it was implied before in the 82, but, it was not explicitly shown.
Out here in the real world we do not always have time to wait for the politicians to make decisions, the job has a deadline and we need tools to do the job. MMC and LMC (also a new concept at the time) are good valid tools, adding it to profile tolerances to get the job done foe the heavy hitters is great, but why take it away from the poor little radius, Is it really because it is hard to measure? Life isn’t always easy.
There’s lots I want to get into with guys who are interested in exploring ideas.
Like:
To circle “E” or to circle “I”, that is the question?
Why not true position of a surface instead of profile?
Why perpendicular and parallel, not just orientation?
Is a feature defined by a radius really different than the same one defined as diameter?
Doesn’t anyone out there use the dreaded ISO and like it?
How can rule #1 not be a violation of all the logic all we are trained in as engineers and assume the worst case, as ISO does, by the way. Must we cling to our calipers in one hand and our concept that we will someday actually produced that perfect feature at MMC in the other? (When I am asked by the shop to accept an oversize shaft is it more perfect, then?)
Anyway thanks, if you bothered to read this far, I guess I will get off my soapbox for now to give someone else a chance.
 
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Dave,

I don't think that the boundary requirement is "automatically" checked on the shop floor, or even checked most of the time. But that doesn't mean that a redundant requirement should be added to the drawing to make it explicit. I agree with John-Paul on this one.

I'll admit that I didn't check the boundary requirement in my early days on the CMM, before I studied GD&T. I went with the default "average" size, just like they taught me in the CMM training class. But if the drawing had to have warnings against every GD&T inspection blunder I've ever committed with a CMM, it would go on forever. "Make sure to inspect the entire axis of the hole, not just one center point". "Be sure to probe more than 3 points when inspecting flatness". "Don't inspect size tolerances using a datum feature simulator ;^)".

Norm,

When you say that a feature functions as a feature of size, or does not, what does that mean exactly? What are the criteria for functioning as a feature of size? I have had a similar idea before but I wondered what it meant to you.

Evan Janeshewski

Axymetrix Quality Engineering Inc.
 
Wow - We can get into Rule #1 and positional especially at MMC but that would be another can of worms.

I am now going to add to my GD&T symbol flip charts with one that will only state "Rule #1". What does it mean? How is it checked and how should it be reported? That is going to be a group of tough questions for GD&T trainees.

I am now out-a-here. Have a good holiday.

Dave D.
 
Yeah-- I suppose we have opened a can of worms! (Has any thread on here ever exceeded 100 posts?)

Time for some turkey. Peace and blessings, everyone...

John-Paul Belanger
Certified Sr. GD&T Professional
 
A feature of size acting like a feature of size has an opposing feature of size into which it assembles too and/or can be defined as having a closed maximum or minimum material boundary.
And of course, Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Norm Crawford
GDTP-S
Applied Geometrics, Inc.
 
Dave,
I am not abandoning you, I do believe the envelope principle should go the way of implied MMC. I want only to make clear I can not advocate ignoring the standard. I would say lets change it if all it is is an adherance to 100 year old concepts that are obsolete.
Perfect, what is perfect, perfection is a concept. Is perfection relative? Perfection is not relative in my mind. Aren't we are making it so? I would argue assuming perfection everywhere forces us to make it relative. The whole feature of size issue goes away it seems from our discussions here. Some of you will say how close to zero do I have to get, true, but at least we have to state it where needed and it is not a blanket that applies everywhere.
The ISO concept of general tolerances, the general tolerancing principle, seems consistant with general engineering philosophy assume the worst tempered with statistical process control (experiance) and state what you need.
 
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