Early in my engineering career, I was told that a screw hole on a part needed to be increased one size. Not knowing any better, I increased the size but made the thread count the same. Little did I know that the machine shop head had recently gotten unfairly grilled by management about following engineering drawings to a T, and had adopted an attitude of malicious compliance. So rather than reach out to engineering to check if they really needed this obscure thread size, he instead just went ahead and purchased a new $7000 threading tool for that size that would never be used again.
I learned a lot that day about common fastener sizes and to always be nice to the machine shop head.
Oh yeah, the magical “chart”. As a tiny company / machinist shop I dread the day I have to order everything on it. But at the end of the day, it saves people hassle and you always have what you need. Luckily so far I only make stuff for my own use in the main job, which is injection molding.
Early in my engineering career, I was told that a screw hole on a part needed to be increased one size. Not knowing any better, I increased the size but made the thread count the same. Little did I know that the machine shop head had recently gotten unfairly grilled by management about following engineering drawings to a T, and had adopted an attitude of malicious compliance. So rather than reach out to engineering to check if they really needed this obscure thread size, he instead just went ahead and purchased a new $7000 threading tool for that size that would never be used again.
I learned a lot that day about common fastener sizes and to always be nice to the machine shop head.
Oh yeah, the magical “chart”. As a tiny company / machinist shop I dread the day I have to order everything on it. But at the end of the day, it saves people hassle and you always have what you need. Luckily so far I only make stuff for my own use in the main job, which is injection molding.