Excessive tolerancing

[JParis]

Also this customer LOVES to call out 32 micro or better all over.

This is my daily life here...all the componenets we make, if we even get so much as a couple of thenth's tool blending issue on an internal area that will never be seen, we have to fix it..god forbid a Datum surface is in a pocket or similar type feature with small corners....if you know how many times I have to finish an entire area with an .047 endmill becasue of blending challenges you'd scream..

The mindset that drives it?

We charge a premium for our products, many with a lifetime warranty....if they are going to buy a diamond, it had better look and function like a diamond.

[Jeff]

This is my daily life here...all the componenets we make, if we even get so much as a couple of thenth's tool blending issue on an internal area that will never be seen, we have to fix it..god forbid a Datum surface is in a pocket or similar type feature with small corners....if you know how many times I have to finish an entire area with an .047 endmill becasue of blending challenges you'd scream..

The mindset that drives it?

We charge a premium for our products, many with a lifetime warranty....if they are going to buy a diamond, it had better look and function like a diamond.

Yeah that tight of work all day long would drive me crazy.
But as long as it's quoted that way and they are paying for that, then that's ok.
I was more trying to say that for the price we quoted, we can't make those tolerances or worry about the 32 micro all over. And they're ok with that 99% of the time.

[JParis]

But if no one ever sees the internals as it's unimportant/non functioning....why?

Because that is what the owner wants...it is driven right from the top

Think about how much more profit you could be making by being sensible.
And how much more throughput you'd get too.

You are preaching to the choir 

[Tim Johnson]

Reading everybody's comments got me thinking: I wonder what % of us here could say that their input is valued or solicited by others in their organization (or by their customers), and what % of us just have to "shut up and make it"? Do you feel valued as an employee/vendor or are you perceived as just another cog in the process?

An engineer and his new hire engineer just came over to discuss our latest spectrometer chamber and what he would like to do to create less less assembly time. The new features might add five minutes of machining time and no tools will be added. I told him not an issue.

[Tim Johnson]

This is my daily life here...all the componenets we make, if we even get so much as a couple of thenth's tool blending issue on an internal area that will never be seen, we have to fix it..god forbid a Datum surface is in a pocket or similar type feature with small corners....if you know how many times I have to finish an entire area with an .047 endmill becasue of blending challenges you'd scream..

The mindset that drives it?

We charge a premium for our products, many with a lifetime warranty....if they are going to buy a diamond, it had better look and function like a diamond.

We have that mindset here also. "If we're going to sell a customer a million dollar instrument it needs to look like a million dollars."

[TylerBeer]

What I just can't understand is WHY we're engineering these parts/assemblies with a metric shit-ton of profile tolerances and GD&T positional Everywhere.

are you sure your shit-tons are metric? that might be the problem