SIMULATION-BASED TOLERANCE STACKUP ANALYSIS IN

~'ACHINING

Rami A. Musia and Samuel H. Huang

Intelligent CAM Systems Laboratory
Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Nuclear Engineering
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH

Y. Kevin Rong
Computer-aided Manufacturing Laboratory
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Worcester Polytec;hnic Institute, Worcester, MA

KEYWORDS INTRODUCTION

Monte Carlo Simulation, Tolerance Chain, Tolerance stackup can be defined as the
Tolerance Chart, Tolerance Allocation accumulation of errors when machining a
feature using different operational datums than
the ones specified in the blueprints. Analysis of
ABSTRACT tolerance stackup is critical to ensure accuracy
of the machined component. The two traditional
Tolerance stackup in machining results from methods used to analyze tolerance stackup in
using operational datums that are different from machining are worst-case analysis and
design datums. It is inevitable due to economic statistical analysis. These methods are based on
considerations of the machining process. assumptions that are too restrictive and have
Conventional methods used for tolerance several drawbacks:
stackup analysis include worst-case and
statistical analysis. These methods are based (1) Worst-case analysis assumes that all
on strong assumptions and have certain tolerances simultaneously occur at their
drawbacks, the most critical one being the worst limit; and thus, is exaggeratedly
inability to analyze geometric tolerances. This pessimistic in calculating tolerance
paper presents a novel method based on feature stackup.
discretization, manufacturing error analysis, (2) Statistical analysis assumes individual
Monte Carlo simulation, and virtual inspection. It tolerances to be independent and have
is generally applicable to stackup analysis of a normal distribution, which allows the
various types of tolerances and produces more use of root sum squares for stackup
accurate and less conservative results. The calculation. This will lead to
trade off is longer computational time. conservative results since individual
tolerances are more or less correlated in
machining.
(3) The analysis is restricted to dimensional
tolerances. In other words, tolerance
stack between features is preformed in

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 one dimension, which does not surface. This method is generally applicable
represent the actual three-dimensional and is particularly useful for the analysis of
features of interest. tolerances specified on a surface. It is more
(4) The root cause of tolerances, namely, accurate and less conservative compared to
manufacturing errors, are not taken into traditional analysis methods. In other words,
account. using the proposed method for stackup
evaluation will result in much less expected
The need to analyze geometric tolerance rejects per million parts when using the same
stackup became apparent in the mid 1990s manufacturing resources.
when the new ANSI standard [ANSI (1995)] is
published with emphasis on geometric The paper is divided into six sections. It starts
tolerancing for improved quality control. with the introduction that explains the research
According to the ANSI standard, there are two motivation. The next section reviews traditional
types of dimensional tolerances and fourteen analytical methods in the tolerance stackup
types of geometric tolerances. Dimensional literature. Then, the proposed simulation-based
tolerances include "Iimit-of-size" tolerances that analysis method is explained. Afterwards.
are applied to only one surface (e.g., the manufacturing error models, categories and their
diameter of a hole), and those that are related to evaluation methods are outlined. This is followed
two surfaces (e.g., the length of a shaft). by an illustrative example. Finally, the utility and
Geometric tolerances can be divided into five applicability of the proposed method is
subcategories: (1) form tolerances that include discussed.
Straightness, Flatness, Roundness, and
Cylindricity, (2) orientation tolerances that
include Parallelism, Angularity, and TRADITIONAL EVALUATION METHODS FOR
Perpendicularity, (3) location tolerances that TOLERANCESTACKUP
include Concentricity, Symmetry, and Position,
(4) runout tolerances that include Circular Traditional tolerance stackup analysis is based
Runout and Total Runout, and (5) profile on the dimension chain (sometimes called
tolerances that include Profile of a Line and tolerance chain) model. A dimension chain is a
Profile of a Surface. Form tolerances are not closed loop of interrelated dimensions. It
subject to stackup because there are not related consists of increasing, decreasing links and a
to any datums. Some researchers have studied single concluding link. The concluding link is the
the stackup of position tolerance [Ngoi et al. one whose tolerance is of interest and which is
(1999), Shan et al. (1999)]. A position tolerance produced indirectly. Increasing and decreasing
is usually specified on a hole. The axis of the links (both called contributing links) are the ones
hole is projected to its primary datum and the that by increasing them, the concluding link
problem is converted into a dimensional increases and decreases, respectively.
tolerance stackup problem. Unfortunately, this Dimension chains for machining processes are
approach cannot be extended to deal with identified from a tolerance chart, which is a
orientation tolerances since parallelism, graphical representation of the underlying
angularity and perpendicularity are specified on process plan [Whybrew and Britton (1997)].
a surface.
The equation for evaluating the concluding
Although researchers have recognized the link's nominal dimension is:
important role of manufacturing errors in I m

machining tolerance stackup [Lin and Zhang c=}:ij-}:dk

j=1 k=1
(2001), Huang and Zhang (1996)], no systematic
analysis method is available. This paper Where:
presents a simulation-based method driven by D': The summation of the increasing link
feature discretization and manufacturing error dimensions.
analysis. The basic idea is to represent the Ed: The summation of the decreasing link
surface of interest with a set of discrete points. dimensions.
The effect of various manufacturing errors on j: increasing links index.
the spatial location of these points is then k: decreasing links index.
simulated. Finally, virtual inspection is I: number of increasing links.
performed to evaluate geometric accuracy of the m: number of decreasing links.

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I,
If
f

The concluding link for the dimension chain This problem can be resolved using Monte Carlo
shown in Figure 1 can be found as: simulation. In fact, Monte Carlo simulation is a
popular tool for assembly tolerance stackup
c=:(i1+i2)-(d1+d2)
analysis [Chase and Parkinson (1991)]. Note
that Monte Carlo simulation is a general tool that
Apparently, the tolerance of concluding link is
determined by the tolerances of the increasing can be applied to many engineering or non-
and decreasing links. There are different engineering problems. The key to its successful
methods to determine this resultant tolerance. In application is an accurate model to describe the
worst-case method, the concluding link's underlying problem. For example, the vector-
loop-based model [Gao et al. (1998)] is used to
tolerance L\c is determined as follows:
describe assembly in 2 and 3-D, where
I oc ..oc
L1c = LI-:-I L1ij + LI-I L1dk tolerance stackup analysis can be achieved
j=1 oz j k=1 od k through Monte Carlo simulation or direct
linearization. The only model that is currently
available for machining tolerance stackup
.~ analysis is the dimension chain model, which
cannot deal with geometric tolerances and does
not take manufacturing errors into account.

t:... d2 ',~
; C i.. . SIMULATION-BASED TOLERANCE
STACKUP ANALYSIS

In order to overcome the limitations of the

dimension chain model, we propose a
simulation-based analysis method that utilizes
.Operational datwn the following strategies:
..Machined mlrface .A set of discrete points is used to
represent the surface whose tolerances
FIGURE 1. A DIMENSION CHAIN are involved in the analysis (Figure 2).
.Monte Carlo simulation is used to study
Referring to Figure 1, the tolerance of the the effect of various manufacturing
concluding link is: errors on the spatial locations of these
l1c = l1il + l1i2+ l1dl + l1d2 points.
.Virtual inspection can then conducted
In statistical method, the concluding link's based on the coordinates of these
tolerance t::.c is determined as follows: points, which allows the analysis of any
types of tolerances (geometric as well
as dimensional).

Referring to Figure 1, the tolerance of the

concluding link cis:

~c = ~(~4)2 +(~4)2 +(~d1)2 +(~d2)2

The worst-case method is clearly too

conservative. The statistical method is
supposed to reflect the stochastic nature of
machining and hence produces realistic results.
The problem is that it assumes normal
distribution, while a machined dimension usually FIGURE 2. PART REPRESENTATION BY SAMPLE
has a flat top distribution [Gladman (1980)]. POINTS.

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 ENHAC
LNo~

Virtu~1 YES
Inspection

FIGURE 3. SIMULATION-BASED TOLERANCE STACKUP ANALYSIS METHOD.

The simulation-based analysis procedure is (5) Stopping criteria.

shown in Figure 3 as a flowchart. The The stopping criteria deal with the number of
components of the flowchart are explained as simulation runs (iterations). Statistically [Kelton,
follows: Sadowski and Sadowski (2002)], the minimum
number of iterations can be calculated by using
(1) Setup plan. the following equation (valid for n > 30):
Setup plan is a high-level process plan. It
includes the number of setups, the datums used -2
n= Z ]-a/2 -S2
in each setup, and the setup sequence. With h2
the same manufacturing resources, tolerance Where:
stackup is solely dependent on the specified n: number of iterations
setup plan. s: sample standard deviation
h: desired half width of confidence interval.
(2) Sample plan. Alternatively, number of iterations can be found
The sample plan deals with the discretization empirically by benchmarking the results at very
of a surface into a set of points. It specifies the big sample size (e.g. 1 billion) and then
number of sample points (sample size) and the choosing a proper tolerance band to determine
position of these points (sample point the sample size [Cvetko et al. (1998)].
distribution). In general, the sample plan
depends on the surface dimension and its (6) Virtual inspection.
inaccuracy, the desired precision, and the Since the surface of interested is represented
capability of the machining process. More details using a set of discrete sample points. its
can be found in [Woo et al. (1995)], where the tolerances can be evaluated using standard
authors concluded that the use of Hammersley CMM (coordinate measuring machine)
sequence and Halton-Zaremba sequence led to inspection methods. Note that the inspection
effective sample plans. results can be fed back to improve the setup
plan if necessary.
(3) Error modeling.
Since our simulation is driven by
manufacturing error analysis, we need to identify MANUFACTURING ERROR MODELS
the contributing error sources that shape up the
features and cause the stack up. More details There is a great amount of papers in the
are given in the next section. literature pertinent to manufacturing error
modeling and its compensation. The recent
(4) Virtual machining. trend is moving towards virtual machining. For
Simulation starts from here by considering a example, [Yao et al. (2002)] uses a desktop
virtual part, shaping its form and orientation in virtual-reality approach to represent the
the space by the sample points and keeping machining and measurement processes by
track of the changes of feature representation including some machining error sources in the
due to material removals and manufacturing model. [Huang et al. (2002)] studied the same
errors. problem analytically to determine root-causes of
machined part inaccuracy. Depending on the

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g ~
 type of applications, manufacturing errors are that are numbered from 1 to 6. Milling is the
classified based on different factors. These process used to machine the surfaces. Hole
factors are: (1) ~, which accounts for error drilling is not included in the simulation since it
variation with time; (2) randomness, errors are does not have an effect on the tolerance chain
categorized as deterministic and random; (3) of concern. Figure 7 shows a tolerance chart of
sources of errors, including geometric errors that the part in order to predict tolerance stackup
represent the inaccuracy of surfaces moving using worst-case and statistical methods. We
relative to each others, thermal errors that are interested in the dimension shown in line 8
account for thermal deformation in the tool as a concluding link. The contributing links are
because of heat provided by cutting process, shown in lines 7, 4 and 1.
machine, people. thermal memory (from
previous environments) and cooling effect from
coolant, and cutting-force induced errors that
come from the dynamic stiffness of all
components of the machine tool; (4) ~
influence on aeometric accurac~, which includes
locating error that accounts for the variation
between the ideal datum and the actual one
after locating and clamping, and machining error
that accounts for the variation between the ideal
position of the machine tool and the actual one
[Un and Zhang (2001). Un et al. (1997)].
FIGURE 4. ABS PART (ANTI-BLOCK SYSTEM
Since we are dealing with tolerance stackup HOUSING).
analysis that focuses on the geometric accuracy c 4~,1~,. 100 .,
of features, it is logical to adopt the last
classification method. All manufacturing errors
are lumped into two categories: (1) setup error
due to locating and clamping an imperfect
workpiece using an imperfect fixture, and (2)
cutting tool deviation that accounts for all other
error sources. Setup error can be determined by
first measuring the accuracy of the underlying .Ih-
fixture (3 rotation and 3 translation components) "I I II III
"I r II I"
and then synthesizing it with workpiece accuracy
(measured using flatness). Cutting tool deviation
can be determined by machining a surface and
then measure surface point variations in z-
-ISJ
coordinate. More details can be found in [Musa
(2003)]. FIGURE 5. SIMPLIFIED PART DRAWINGS.

IllUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE The simulation is run under the following

conditions:
In this section, an illustrative example is .Raw material surface flatness: 0.05 mm
provided to compare tolerance stackup analysis .Cutting tool deviation: N (0, 0.00751.
results using worst-case, statistical and .Rotational setup error around three
simulation based methods. The comparison is axes: U (-0.002, 0.005) degrees.
made over a dimensional tolerance, since both .Translational setup error in three axes:
worst-case and statistical analysis cannot deal U (-0.0015, 0.005) mm.
with geometric tolerances. A housing part for
anti-block system is used (Figure 4). A As was mentioned earlier, determining the
simplified drawing of the finished part number of iterations for the simulation is a
dimensional requirements is shown in Figure 5. crucial task in Monte Carlo simulation. Here, we
The setup plan for machining the part is shown benchmarked the results of the simulation at
in Figure 6. The part has six surfaces of interest 100,000 to calculate the errors in the first two

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=
~
 moments when having less sample size. Note A comparison of the results of worst-case,
that 10,000 iterations are considered large statistical, and simulation methods in finding
enough by most Monte Carlo simulation concluding link tolerance stackup is shown in
researchers [Cvetko (1998)]. The first two
moments (mean and variance) at 100,000
iterations are shown in Table 1 for dimensions in
lines 1, 4, 7 and 8.
Table 2. Monte Carlo simulation results were
found to be less than both the traditional
methods. The ratio of simulation tolerance
stackup to the worst case tolerance stackup was
",' I "
,
found to be 0.34 and the ratio of simulation
';
:
tolerance stackup to the statistical method ;
tolerance stackup was found to be 0.59.
I; ,
TABLE 2. TOLERANCE EVALUATION USING THE ,;;,'
~I THREE APPROACHES. ;',1
i i
"
.l , Standard Deviation Tolerance=6a

-~
DO [DIJ
! [JIIJ
, ~
~ "-"-"---b\; ,t;c~
l-'~-,"

: Ii
~ L1
L4 0.010698664 0.064191982
! ! Ii L7 0.010872206 0.065233235
FIGURE ,,
6. SETUP PLAN. .. La 0.010890703 0.065344216
Worst
.., Case
Statistical
0.193434944
0.111683618
).. I Simulation
Simulation
'4r:-o
/
0.065344216

Figure 8 shows the dimension histograms of

{ t the concluding link (La) and the contributing links
(L1, L4 and Lr). Number of iterations required to
achieve certain accuracy can be predicted from
~ 1..;
Figure 8. This figure shows means and standard
deviations predicted using the simulation in
$ terms of number of iterations (X axis). Clearly,
4,000 iterations seem to have very close results
to the 100,000 iterations. Therefore, 4000
IWak..,.DmI
.-,;~~1-..I
I BaJob:,~
l~i..1
,." r;,..
;...ho'
iterations can be considered as a proper choice
for the sample size of virtually machined parts
I 15 I

, i ITTI _III
-
II1~161
I 1.S I
-~+1
10
(iterations.)
I 1110 "'Iii II 4+~

ii:1:11111
1
8
mlli 1:1
'---""'- 1J
'+'

~ Jj---~

FIGURE 7. TOLERANCE CHART.

TABLE 1. SIMULATION RESULTS AT 100,000

ITERATIONS.

Mean Variance
~

84.9983246659704 0.000113812363943454
59.9943255754447 0.000114461403303197
49.9926265647646 0.000118204861229129
0.000118607406206314 FIGURE 8. PROGRESS OF RESULTS WITH
SAMPLE SIZE INCREASE.

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I
~
~'"
-~~
~""
~
~
0.010668288
I0.064009727
~
 Suppose that we need to maintain 0.066 mm TABLE 3. PART PER MILLION (PPM) REJECT
for the dimension shown in line 8 01' the COMPARISON WHEN ALLOCATING PRODUCTION
tolerance chart (Figure 7). Then, we will need to TOLERANCE USING WORST CASE, STATISTICAL
allocate proper tolerances for the concluding AND SIMULATION METHODS.
links (dimensions shown in lines 1, 4 and 7). Worst .
According to our simulation, assigning 0.060 mm Case Statistical Simulation
for each of the three contributing links will be Tolerance 2.02a 3.5a 6a
good enough. However, if we make the C-p-- 0.37 0.64 1
allocation decision based on the worst case and PPM rejects 312,500 80,100 2,700
statistical methods, 0.022 mm and 0.038 mm will
be needed for each contributing link,
respectively. Apparently, traditional methods CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
overestimate the severity of tolerance stackup RECOMMENDATIONS
and hence allocate tighter than necessary
production tolerances. A method for evaluating tolerance stackup
using Monte Carlo simulation driven by feature
Process capability indicates how capable discretization, manufacturing error analysis, and
manufacturing process is to maintain design virtual inspection is proposed in this work.
requirements in terms of number of rejects Cutting tool deviation and setup error were
expected out of a million. Usually. it is simulated along with machining and inspecting
represented by the Cpindex, which is the ratio of processes for virtual parts. This method is
design specifications (tolerance T) to the generally applicable to geometric as well as
dimensional tolerances. It also gives less
process variability (6a) , i.e., C = ~. If we
p 60- conservative results compared to the traditional
choose processes that are capable to achieve ones (worst case and statistical methods).
f our simulation requirements, then we will be Overestimating tolerance stackup could result in
> satisfied with 2,700 parts per million (PPM) precluding good process plans that should be
)
rejects when having the process capability index accepted. Therefore, accurate evaluation of
1 equals to 1. However, if we use the same tolerance stackup can lead to cost-effective
process considering the traditional methods, process plans.
much more rejects per million will be
erroneously expected (as shown in Table 3 and Validation is used to ensure that the simulation
5 model matches accurately enough with the real
Figure 9) since the allocated production
) world behavior. Our future work will focus on
tolerances are tighter than necessary. In other
~ conducting experiments to validate the
words, simulation results suggest that the
s simulation results. In our illustrative example, it
chosen processes are capable to do the job,
whereas the traditional methods do not. This was assumed that the probability distribution
shows the importance of having a less functions (pdt) of cutting tool deviation and setup
conservative method for tolerance allocation. error are available and follow normal distribution.
In reality, this may not be true, especially when
dealing with new products. We have developed
r ~t,,~.J.l~)~PI'-i
~TCI.sE experimental procedures to estimate error pdt's
and preliminary results showed that these errors
RojOCW.J,4)OO-
r STA11511:AI. do not follow normal distribution. Therefore,
,/ ~ Ro~.hI3~WM
(SlMJLAna4 general probability density estimation will be an
important future research topic.
~ 2.02a
, ~ Finally, we would like to mention that Monte
1:-. -3.Sa Carlo simulation is computationally expensive,
while analytical methods are more efficient.
~---~ J- =6a Therefore, when dealing with dimensional
tolerances, it should be beneficial to develop
statistical methods that consider error
FIGURE 9. REJECTION AREAS COMPARISON
correlations and different error pdt's. This will
H WHEN ALLOCATING PRODUCTION TOLERANCES
USING WORST CASE, STATISTICAL AND solve the overestimation problem in tolerance
SIMULATION METHODS. stackup analysis while preserving computational

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--
~
 efficiency. When dealing with geometric Huang, S. H., and H.-C. Zhang, 1996, "Use of
tolerances, analytical methods may not be Tolerance Chart for NC Machining," Journal of
feasible because of the need for feature Engineering Design and Automation, Vol. 2, No.
discretization. To improve computational 1,pp.91-104.
efficiency, modified Monte Carlo simulation
maybe the only way. Kelton, W. D., R. P. Sadowski, and D. A.
Sadowski,
McGraw-Hili, 2002,
Second Simulation
Edition. with Arena'

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This material is based upon work supported by
the National Science Foundation under Grant
No. 0099735. Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in
this material are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National
Science Foundation.
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