ISO 2768 is an international manufacturing standard that can not only help answer those questions but also minimize inconsistencies while accounting for manufacturing costs as well. The bars also vary in length and when you take a closer look, you realize they are not perfectly circular.Ĭan you still use them? If not, can you reject them and demand that the vendor redo them at no cost? How close to the Ø50mm should you really be? ISO 2768: An International Standard You place an order to fabricate 200 of these Ø50mm rounds bars and when you receive and measure them, you get values like Ø53mm, Ø47mm, Ø51mm, Ø49mm, with a lot of variation. In other words, it’s a controlled margin of error.įor example, let’s say you specify a round solid bar of 100mm length with Ø50mm that will fit inside of a hole in another component. These tolerances represent the variations between nominal dimensions (the original intention of the design) and the maximum and minimum values of a dimension that still guarantees a fit. In manufacturing, this range of acceptance is defined by tolerance limits. That said, you can decide how much a fabricated product can deviate from the original intention in order to be accepted. Even if you’re able to get an instance comparable to your design intention, it’s nearly impossible to achieve the same exact dimensions in a batch process. Fabricating a product without deviations from the original design is extremely complicated.
