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Over a year ago Universal Engineering
implemented the ANSI 14.5M-1982 standards. At that time
all Engineering personnel went through a 32-hour training course
that covered the basis of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing
(GD&T). The GD&T standard was developed as an
international language to communicate between designer and
manufacturer. It defines how a part should be made to
achieve its required ANSI standards and convert them to symbols.
The manufacturers must be able to read, interpret and apply them
to processes that will result in fabrication of parts to high
quality and in a cost effective manner.
However, as is the common case
with any standards. 95% of the standard is straight
forward but the remaining 5% is open to interpretation depending
on the application. During the implementation period, the
Engineering Department faced numerous problems with applying
GD&T. This indicated the need of further, more advanced
training focused on Universal applications.
The scope of the course, to
address the most challenging Universal requirements, was defined
with Professor Donald Day of Tec-Ease. The course began
the end of May. During the 24-hour course a number of
newly designed Universal assemblies and subassemblies were
evaluated. The virtual and resultant conditions were
calculated to perform stackup analysis of true position
tolerance vectors analysis and statistical tolerancing were
applied to analyze fits of the parts within analysis.
The course proved to be very
beneficial to all of the participants. It improved
Engineering's proficiency in analyzing designs and applying GD&T
standards. The completion of the course and knowledge
gained from it will be essential to the success of concurrent
engineering.
It cannot go without saying that
much of the success of the course was due to the excellent
instructor, Donald Day. His in-depth knowledge of the GD&T
standards, the perfection in preparing, and the way he conducted
the sessions made the course a memorable learning experience.
One of the participants put it best when he said, "What a
difference one Day can make!!"
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