If you had the opportunity to improve productivity and accuracy in manufacturing while reducing costs and the level of work required, would you take it?
Tolerance analysis and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) are known as tedious and time-consuming manual processes, often involving hand-written calculations after the fact.
There are multiple ways to analyze for tolerances and each method has its own level of accuracy. Accordingly, results are not always clearly communicated. This can make part production and manufacturing tricky, especially when designs come from outside sources.
Today’s market revolves around shorter lifecycles for products, faster time-to-market and much tighter cost pressures. Manufacturers need to be able to meet these requirements to remain competitive, but performing manual tolerance analysis and GD&T can dramatically lower effectiveness.
GD&T Advisor assesses the permissible margin of error in part production. (Image courtesy of Sigmetrix.)
This software can also perform these analyses while a part is still in the CAD stage to avoid production of a part that might not even work – and that can add up to a lot of saved money and time.
Case Study: Shaw Development and Sigmetrix
Shaw Development specializes in designing, developing and manufacturing custom fluid management systems for heavy-duty vehicles, including fuel containment and diesel exhaust fluid components.
Recently, Shaw Development announced that it would be using Sigmetrix’ tolerance analysis software as part of its design and production system. These programs, CETOL 6σ and GD&T Advisor, profess to simplify tolerance analyses and GD&T definition by allowing users to visualize tolerance stack areas in a digital 3D environment before part production.
CETOL 6σ performs tolerance analysis in a digital environment before parts are produced. (Image courtesy of Sigmetrix.)
For Shaw Development, with a customer base in a wide variety of industries including construction, trucking and military, universal precision is key – so incorporating a type of tolerance analysis software makes sense.
“As a custom engineering specialist, robustness and product quality is essential to our design process,” said Bart Baker, senior designer at Shaw Development.
“We chose Sigmetrix because of their long history with successful mechanical engineering products. CETOL 6σ and GD&T Advisor both directly integrate into the CAD environment and this is an integral part in improving our design robustness and optimizing our manufacturing goals,” Baker continued.
For more information, visit the Shaw Development website and the Sigmetrix website.