Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations cowski on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Tan Plane

Status
Not open for further replies.

ringman

Mechanical
Mar 18, 2003
385
Is it possible that someone in this forum might be able to give me a link (?) to an example of 'tan plane', as defined in ASME Y14.5-1994, being used on a part?. I am searching for a 'real world part' rather than a partial example in text or training manuals. I am trying to improve my understanding of Y14.5 and how it relates to geometry.

TIA,
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Lack of responses is reinforcing my opinion that the Tan Plane concept is 'moderately invalid'. Anyone with an example that really exists?
 
Tangent Plane is not used too often since most people don't know it exists but in most cases where the mating surface contacts a plane, tangent to the plane is real life. One would only contact on the high points on the plane during assembly.

If one had a 45 degree angle with a +/- 30 minute tolerance, the shop floor would use a protractor and contact tangent to the axis or high points and read the actual angle from the protractor. This is an axis and not a plane.

On a tangent plane, one would need a checking flat the exact size of the plane. Place the checking flat on the plane then then check the tilt in both directions (both axis)and report the highest reading. Tangent plane just takes the flatness out of the equation.

If you think people don't understand GD & T now, just place a "T" with a circle around it and insert it in the feature control frame after the tolerance and watch the reaction.

There ARE good uses but I don't believe that we are at that level yet in industry. This forum kind of proves it.

Dave D.
 
I had an application recently that required the Tangent modifier.

In the drawing we want to control the lowest point of the terminal insulation crimp relative to datum J (box of the receptacle). This controls the "bend" of the crimped terminal in one direction. Since the form of the insulation crimp can vary from sample to sample, indicating a specific point is not funcionally feasible.

tangentmodifier.jpg


 
Difficult to imagine the functional requirements for the tan plane callout. The profile control of an element would seem to do the job quite adequately. I believe though, for the profile control to be legitimate, the element requires a specified relationship to the datums J and E. (E is apparently missing.)

Who and why was the tan suggested?.

The drawing in in accord with Y14.5-1994, correct?
 
The tan modifying is not used correctly here in the example. One can use the tan modifier on angles but not profiles.

Looking at the drawing, since datum J is on the same plane, one should have placed phantom lines between datum J and the feature. Do not use a basic dimension of 0. I could not find datum E either??

Profile of a surface controls the angle of the surface, flatness and location all in one.

Dave
 
The dimension 0.00 is meaningless. It would be better to extend the .030 dim. to the 0.00 dim. location. Not what was asked, but it is glaring.
 
E is missing because I only posted one view from the drawing. It is a feature of size defined by the 2 outside surfaces adjacent to datum J.

The phantom line instead of 0.00 BASIC makes sense. Thank you.

The objective was to control how high or low the surface identified by the profile of a line can shift relative to datum J. Essentially we want to control how much the terminal can bend about the insulation crimp. One problem is that the insulation crimp is a very imperfect surface who's shape can vary substantially from sample to sample

One mistake was assuming that the tangent would always be a point that a plane parallel to datum J would contact.

If I changed the profile of a line to parallelism, would that make this correct? (I'm thinking not)

What method might be best for my purpose?

 
Take out the Tangent symbol and there you go. This will control everything you need.

Dave
 
The more I read, the confuseder I become.

Tan used to mean contact between a plane and either a point or a element of a curved surface. Now it seems to be redefined as contact between a plane and counterpart of the feature surface. One example cites its application as working on either concave or convex surfaces.

One text defines Tangent Plane-A theoretically exact plane derived from the true geometric counterpart of the specified feature surface.
And Datum-A theoretically exact point-plane or axis derived from the true geometric counterpart of a specified datum feature. (Not a whole lot of diff)

The examples from ctopher appear similar to one in the Y14.5. They are missisng the view that would show the 'depth' of the part, for one thing.

I cannot accept the idea of orienting a plane as stated in the summary. Somehow it just don't fit!
 
I think I have it figured out, finally. Tonight after dinner as my spoon was resting on my plate, it occurred to me that I had discovered the elusive TAN PLANE. Now if I can just find an application for this in the world of mechanical design and sell it to the Committee.

Opinions?
 
I think TAN PLANE would work best in a situation where you need a surface to be, say parallel, to another surface over a large distance. The surface needs to be parallel because the part that will be in contact with this surface needs to be parallel to the other surface, but you don't care about the total surface finish because as long as the part is within spec in the locations it will be contacting it will work. In other words you can accept a part that has waves and defects as long as the highest points are within spec. It allows you to have a tight tolerance on a large feature without increasing the cost.

This does the same thing as datum targets would but without having to specify a particular point of contact.





David
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor