Series on Composite

Tolerancing - part I
Published on November 9, 2016

Joao Baker

GD&T and Product Development, Mechanical

Engineer, M. Sc.
21 articles  Follow

Material produzido pela Tec-Ease

Composite tolerancing continues to confuse many folks. This series of 3 Tips will attempt

to clear up the confusion. On the first drawing a position tolerance is applied to the 2

holes. This position tolerance locates the holes relative to the datum reference frame

within 0.4 mm. That means the holes may misalign 0.4 mm with respect to each other.

Imagine there is a shaft that will assemble through the two holes. You would want the
two holes to act as a single hole. There are two easy ways to specify this. One way is to

add the continuous feature symbol to the size dimension. Symbol "A" means that the two

holes should be considered as a single hole. For that reason, the 2X is omitted. The

second method, symbol "B" is to replace the position tolerance with a composite position

tolerance.

The upper segment is controlling the location of the holes relative to the datum reference

frame. The second segment is controlling the position of the two holes relative to each

other. Both approaches have the same meaning. This will keep the holes in-line as if they

were one hole but they can be out of position which includes orientation by as much as

0.4 mm.

The remaining Tips in this series will show how to better control the orientation error.

Watch the video of this Tip (http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?

r=41908125&msgid=453003&act=Q22S&c=436958&destination=https%3A%2F%2

Fwww.tec-ease.com%2Fvideo%2FApril_12.mp4) to see animations of these tolerance

zones.