IIGDT World International Institute of
Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing
 
 
 
 
Value of In-House GD&T Training....Are all the pieces coming together?

The budget has been delivered from Mount Management up high! You look it over to see if your metrology needs are fulfilled. Hmmmm. Something is just not right. Remember that shiny new CMM on the shop floor? You noticed there was no budgeted training expense.

Manufacturing CellYou lean back and drift off in thought. With the in-line production cell about to start, the outside engineering company has done a remarkable job providing a fully working solution. The line delivers parts as expected, one every 30 seconds. What is there to be concerned about? The consultants have gone home, production parts are being delivered, the shiny new CMM is inspecting every part. The SPC charts are green. Life is good.

The first shipment is returned from the customer. Wait, everything is running so smooth! The customer reports the parts have an interference fit when assembled, and that is not suppose to happen. You give some of the returned parts to the quality department and they already don't trust that shiny new CMM so the parts are constrained on the surface plate and manually inspected. Constrained to the outside surfaces that are defined by basic dimensions. The parts measure correctly. Conflict arises. You have two measurement processes that don't correlate.

The real problem is understanding how GD&T is acted upon in the 3D world, not when constrained, especially to a basic dimension surface. Here is where that omitted line item for GD&T training becomes so important. The shiny new CMM has software developed that takes into account all possible variables. Simultaneous datums, non-orthogonal coordinate systems and other challenging setup considerations that cannot be verified manually in the classic sense. Key questions that should have been asked up-front is: Does the GD&T on the drawing truly reflect the designers true intent: were the requirements being interpreted correctly; and is the CMM software truly providing the correct analytical results by the customer and/or supplier?

You lean forward in your chair and return to the budget report. Good thing it was just a thought of what could be. Time for a meeting to discuss with management just how important training is to ensure the designer specified the engineering requirement optimally, that manufacturing is correctly interpreting the engineering requirement correctly to make chips and quality who is inspecting the results are to the final product mathematically correct. With consulting services offered by Dr Hetland, you know the budget will get amended.

Life is good.

Visit consulting IIGDT Consulting Services for GD&T in-house training and budget review.