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Product Tolerance Representation: Critical Requirements for Product/Process Interoperability
Curtis Brown, Principal Engineer, Science-Based Manufacturing
NNSA's Kansas City Plant and Honeywell FM&T
Today’s commercial product definition technologies can successfully deliver complete and unambiguous representations of product nominal shapes as well as the exchange of nominal shape models. Regrettably, the fact remains that manufacturers can not make perfect nominal shapes and quality must validate product specifications. Fortunately, many can make parts that fit and function - that is, if designers correctly apply functional tolerances and if product definition systems accurately communicate these tolerances to manufacturing and quality. This communication might be accomplished via shared native CAD systems through a representation of shape and a presentation of annotations; however, with the increase reliance on supplier-based manufactures, non-proprietary exchange mechanisms are essential for success. In this presentation, requirements for a complete and unambiguous product tolerance representation that complements a nominal solid shape will be shared. A distinction between tolerance presentation and tolerance representation will be made. Because of the inherent intelligence from a good representation, advanced functions, such as tolerance feature recognition, correct tolerance inferencing, and checking and grading the overall tolerance definition for a piece part will be discussed. Furthermore, a review of how such a representation can provide a rich foundation for complete product modeling and the interoperability of complete and unambiguous tolerance information for both product and process definitions will be addressed.
Curtis is currently a Principle Engineer for NNSA\'s Kansas City Plant operated by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies. He has earned Mechanical Engineering degrees and is a registered Professional Engineer. His work experience includes engineering support of coordinate metrology operations, the software development model-based engineering applications and project lead of a collaborative model-based enterprise program. Curtis is author of Feature-Based Tolerancing and Feature-Based Measuring technology. He is the chairman of the DMIS Standards Committee and presides over the Dimensional Metrology Standards Consortitum.
