Tolerances.  We’re all familiar with them.  But what do they mean to your project?

Tolerances within manufactured fabrications are actually Engineering Tolerances.  This defines the permissible limits of variation in a physical dimension – material thickness, overall dimensions, hole placement or size, location and degree of a bend.  This defines the acceptable amount of dimensional variation that will still allow an object to function correctly.  Essentially, it gives the part some “wiggle room.”  Defining these measurements in smaller tolerances gives you greater control over accuracy, consistency, precision, and overall quality of your manufactured part.

Tighter tolerances are important because they will improve the consistency of parts being made.  Ultimately, this will improve the fit and functionality of those parts, especially in an assembly.  Many parts that must fit together creates less room for error as they are assembled.  Better parts that consistently fit together trickles down to less rejected parts, creating more reliable manufacturing, efficiency, and cost savings.

Now yes, bo-mar can hold tight tolerances.  But many shops can.  What sets bo-mar apart is the experience of knowing when tolerances are vital, and when they are standard.  With so many years in fabrication, we know metal.  When bo-mar approaches a project, we want to understand where our part fits into an assembly, or how it interacts with other parts around it.  With this information, we are able to discern if your tolerance levels are appropriate – for both functionality and for cost.  If your tolerance is set unnecessarily high, it becomes a waste of time, effort, and it effects your bottom line.  If you are willing and able to accept a greater margin of error (lower tolerance), then we would be able to save you money while still making you a part that will fit and function as you need it to.

Tolerances will assume a certain amount of error.  Not every part is spot, dead-on perfect.  But with our quality system in place, we are able to identify and set aside the non-conformant parts before they get delivered to our customers.  Once identified, our Quality Department goes through a thorough process – called a Corrective Action Report – to identify what went wrong in the fabrication of the part, and make adjustments to ensure it does not happen again.  This CAR is our self-correcting process in which we identify where in the fabrication process something went wrong.  Once identified, it is corrected so that the mistake is not repeated.  The CAR report and process are important components of our ISO certification and help us to continually assess and improve our work.

Tolerances are a level of quality expectation agreed upon between our client and us, their fabricator.  These guarantee that we are on the same page, and that the part we deliver will work exactly the way our client expects it to.  This makes for more reliable purchasing from bo-mar.  This results in less headaches for our clients and efficiencies in time, dependability, and many times, cost-savings.