Gage Ring
Rings True

The Situation

Unity manufactured two parts of a three-piece assembly for a customer, which the customer then assembled themselves. While Unity manufactured the components to print, the stacking up of tolerances in the assembly led to unreliable parts. Naturally, the customer wanted to revisit the design and improve part consistency but not increase costs. 

The Challenge

How could Unity identify the problem and redesign the piece while maintaining current production costs? 

The Unity Solution

The part in question, a gage ring, required incredibly tight tolerances. Unity’s engineers went back to the drawing board with the customer on this piece. Is the design of this assembly as clean as we can get it? Could it be modified to fix the alignment of the third piece? What would we do if we were designing this from scratch? 

We discovered that the two pieces that Unity was already producing could be modified to eliminate the need for the third piece. Even better, the modifications to the design-led to overall higher tolerances on the finished assembly. 

Results

The new two-piece assembly costs the customer less money, holds tighter tolerances, and provides more consistent quality. What’s more, Unity offered to take on the assembly process, lightening the customer’s workload and allowing them only to inventory their finished assemblies.