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I have this conversation about once a month with engineering. Can anyone direct me to the procedure regarding rounding of numbers. The argument is.. if you report to one decimal place you can round off to that place.(when it suits them). Usually the decimal place is done to follow a block tolerance.

If it is profile or position, you used all the tolerance...
I have another part with 12.000 diameter ± .001. Following that logic it could range from 11.9985 to 12.00149 essentially bloating the tolerance range from .002 to .00299, nearly 50%
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Oh the rounding discussion. I feel like this gets brought up all the time.

The biggest argument that I hear is that if the tolerance is to 2/3/4 decimal places, that is all you report to because that is what the drawing is conveying to you. Hopefully someone can point me to an ISO or ASME/ANSI standard that confirms this, but all I've ever read is that there is no difference in 0.00100000000000000000000000 and 0.001. I feel like the confusion starts with the block tolerancing.

You are hamstringing yourself if you do not report beyond the 2/3/4 decimal place. The case in point would be your 12 ±0.001 tolerance. If you reported only to the 3rd decimal place, every measurement is only going to show nominal or OOS. Your GR&R would look horrible.

I also hear the argument that the CMM is not accurate the 4th, 5th, 6th, etc decimal place. My counter-argument is that you are confusing accuracy with resolution. They are two different things.


At the end of it all, do whatever your boss says to do, and make sure it's documented.
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That's the problem, an engineer shouldn't dictate metrology. Yes I report to 4 places on the 12.000 dimension, and get instructed to display, and round to 3, because that is the number of places in nominal. It is ridiculous argument, but I haven't found documentation to back of the logical conclusion
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Not really, He thought I was condescending because I stated the definition. I was told my report was misleading because the result was formatted red while the numbers displayed were in tolerance. I considered it misleading to delete the trailing info,.

I'm not a great communicator so I state things twice.
If you say Basic dimensions have no tolerance (they hear wide open)
If you say Basic dimensions have zero tolerance(they hear you contradicted yourself)
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"Y14.5 tells us in section 2.4 that all numbers are absolute. In other words, 1 means 1.000000…….forever. Y14.5 also refers us to ANSI/IEEE 268 standard on rounding off. In this standard we are told that you cannot increase the limits of a dimension as a result of rounding "where the original limits may not be violated." Let's say the part thickness shown measures .236. Back in school most of us were told that we could round this to .24. That might be fine in sixth grade, but when measuring parts, it won't pass. Bottom line, the .236 measurement is out of tolerance."

http://www.dimcax.com/gdt_web/august-05.htm
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For clarity, we report to the engineers at least 10 steps of a tolerance as a standard in house rule, it works for most things.

Your example of 12 +/- 0.001 is only 2 at that resolution (11.999,12.000 and 12.001), so we would definitely report at least the 4th decimal in that case.

If something like a Cap study, GRR, or PPAP is being done we give them the data with full CMM resolution and have them decide how they want to deal with the numbers. It's well understood here that Calypso doesn't round results so we don't have to have that discussion.
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Had this exact argument again today.. You only are required to report to the number of decimal places on print, and can round to that.. I keep getting this discussion, but no one can't show me where that practice is stated.. anyone ? It's hard to argue against , I read it somewhere

I keep seeing people reference the FORMAT section of ASME regarding decimal places on prints, and they infer that also means reporting..
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