Interchangeability and dimensional chain analysis

ABSTRACTMS ThesisINTERCHANGEABILITYAND DIMENSIONAL CHAIN ANALYSISMehmet H. DEREInonu UniversityGraduate School of Natural and Applied SciencesDepartment of Mechanical Engineering69 + vii pages2005Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Heybet ELDAROVTolerances play a significant role in the development, interchangeability and cost ofmanufactured products. Manufacturing a machine or machine part with functional andmechanical properties in toleranced dimensions provides easy assemblibility andmaintenance. This is the basis of interchangeability. By creating assemblies whichperform properly, are cost efficient, engineers can assist in producing high quality,interchangeable and marketable products.In today?s competetive market, it is not enough to make technical drawings that canbe understood. The designer must make drawings that cannot possibly bemisunderstood. Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing is the key word.Tolerance analysis allows the designer to quantitatively estimate the effects ofvariation on design requirements in the early design phases. Using computerprogrammes for tolerance analysis will make calculations easier.Research presented in this thesis focuses on interchangeability, tolerances, toleranceanalysis and developing a computer program for tolerance calculations of dimensionalchains. Maximum-minimum and statistical methods have been examined, andcalculations for a sample assembly are presented. The results show that for massproduction it is more appopriate for a designer to use statistical tolerance for each partdimension.KEYWORDS: Interchangeability, tolerance, tolerance analysis, dimensional chain.i