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Timbrell explains that, for one manufacturer, the tolerance may be very difficult to comply with, while for the other manufacturer may find it completely easy. However, this arbitrary ‘down-the-middle’ approach is potentially inefficient. “And then we split the difference of that variation between the two part manufacturers, and ask them to comply with two equal sets of tolerances.” “We tell our vendors that we can’t afford for the interference to be more than a half a millimeter,” he says. Previously, the industry put what Timbrell calls ‘dumb tolerances’ on products. “The same goes for the rod made by a pultruder-this is created in a totally different process using totally different raw materials, with its own set of tolerances.” Every component may have a flaw or deviation from the specifications that can be ‘tolerated’ by the overall design to form a functional whole.įor the spreader rods, a spring maker makes one component with nominal dimensions that might be skewed in certain ways “that we as a non-experts don’t truly understand,” says Timbrell. When product manufacturers combine several different components, they do ‘tolerance stacking’, which analyzes the accumulated variation allowed by specified dimensions and tolerances.
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Traditional Tolerance-Stacking: Splitting the Difference But Timbrell wanted to determine how much ‘wiggle room’ each vendor could get away with and still have a system that was robust and effective. This puts restrictions on the manufacturing specifications for both the rod vendor and the spring vendor. The two primary parts of this component are a pultruded rod, and a spring that clamps the rod to a conductor.įor the spreader rods to be functional, the rod diameter has to be bigger than the spring. Phil Timbrell, Manager of Engineering Services at PLP Australia, faced this problem with the process for manufacturing spreader rods, which are used to hold low-voltage lines in windy conditions. PLP Australia often has to bring together products manufactured by specialist manufacturers with their own methods, standards and specifications, which in some cases makes it difficult to combine hardware parts from two different suppliers. PLP Australia has a fully equipped Engineering department to design and test such fittings for both the Australian and South East Asia markets. Preformed Line Products (PLP) is a worldwide designer, manufacturer and supplier of high quality cable anchoring and control hardware and systems, fiber optic and copper splice closures, and high-speed cross-connect devices.