Protective Coatings for Shop Made Gages?

Piper3T said:

The shop I work at makes and uses a lot of checking gages. We've never really coated them in anything, maybe cold black oxide.

I was wondering what other people do for wear protection on in-house gages such as plug gages, thread plug gages, thread ring gages, and other go/nogo type gages.

I'm probably overthinking things, but we go to a lot of effort to design the tolerance stackup and make the gage. If I can extend the life of the gage adding a coating, that might be worth it. And if the coating will change thickness, we'd have to re-do the stackup before fabrication.

I know some thread gages are TiN coated, our pin gages from vermont gage have black oxide. Just looking for other ideas.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Piper3T said:

The shop I work at makes and uses a lot of checking gages. We've never really coated them in anything, maybe cold black oxide.

I was wondering what other people do for wear protection on in-house gages such as plug gages, thread plug gages, thread ring gages, and other go/nogo type gages.

I'm probably overthinking things, but we go to a lot of effort to design the tolerance stackup and make the gage. If I can extend the life of the gage adding a coating, that might be worth it. And if the coating will change thickness, we'd have to re-do the stackup before fabrication.

I know some thread gages are TiN coated, our pin gages from vermont gage have black oxide. Just looking for other ideas.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Gordon B. Clarke said:

Never forget that when coatings have a thickness then it's too late to apply on the finished gauge.

On standard 60º flank angle threads it increases the pitch diameter by 4x the layer thickness and on 29º/30º flank angle threads by 8x.

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DMF_TomB said:

.
reminds me the time i bought some 3/4-10 threaded rod 6 foot length and could not get any nuts on. the store lady sent regular steel threaded rod out for galvanized plating. i call store say i cannot get the nuts on and she says i have to use galvanized nuts which i am guessing she thought were bigger. she probably was not at her job very long.

Click to expand...

DMF_TomB said:

.
reminds me the time i bought some 3/4-10 threaded rod 6 foot length and could not get any nuts on. the store lady sent regular steel threaded rod out for galvanized plating. i call store say i cannot get the nuts on and she says i have to use galvanized nuts which i am guessing she thought were bigger. she probably was not at her job very long.

Click to expand...