An Overview and Classification of Tolerance Compensation Methods

Abstract

Technological advances as well as novel manufacturing and design paradigms, such as industry 4.0 and digitalization, offer new opportunities for innovative products. However, they also increase the product complexity and cause new challenges in the production process. Therefore, agile production approaches are crucial. Tolerance compensation provides more flexibility in the production process, as demands on dimensional accuracy of the components are reduced. As a result, tolerance compensation also offers the possibility of reducing production costs without compromising product quality. Nevertheless, tolerance compensation is often considered a reactive intervention to reduce the number of out-of-spec parts a posteriori instead of including it in the early stages of Geometrical Variations Management. The contribution tackles this issue by characterizing and categorizing different methods of tolerance compensation as well as providing design guidelines for the application of tolerance compensation methods. This enables design engineers to select a suitable tolerance compensation method for different applications.

State of the Art on Robust Design Methods for Additive Manufacturing

“…However, this methodology remains limited only to structures. Besides that, [11] confirmed that the main intention of RD is to design a system with less performance variations and even insensitive to the process inputs variations such as material properties and operational conditions. Currently, the robustness is applied to simple forms, such as thin-walled shells like cylinders, cones and spheres [12].…”

“…[3,7,12] and [15]), and some of them are not proven yet for AM technologies (e.g. [8,[10][11][12] and [13]). In addition, the majority of these methods have not been combined yet.…”

Tolerance Specifications Management Integrated into the Product Development Cycle

“…In a digitally connected manufacturing environment, the possibility of compensating tolerances becomes a reality, as shown by Aschenbrenner et al [43]. Often, compensation methods are seen as an intervention to limit the scraps, but they can also be used early in the geometric variation management to select appropriate compensation strategies.…”