2020/12/30 Simple design guide: Alignment dowels | LinkedIn (62)

2 1 59 Try Premium Free

Search
for 1 Month

Courtesy of Benrobuck on Wikimedia

Simple design guide: Alignment dowels

Published on January 16, 2017

Steven Weinberg 14 articles Follow

Product Development Engineer at C2P-Inc

Engineering design is a subject so vast that it is pretty much inevitable that new engineering
graduates come out of school with gaping holes in their knowledge. It was certainly true for
me. To address that issue, simple design guides, to help get through common problems, are
probably quite helpful to those new to the field.

A little while ago, I wrote an article including some tips for the advanced beginner when
designing parts to be CNCed. You can find it here:

More recently, I helped someone with a design problem similar to the one I will discuss in
this article, and I felt the process would be useful for others as well, as it is a common
situation. Before anyone jumps on me, I know that I am simplifying the issue. For example,
I discuss neither the materials involved, nor statistical analysis of tolerances, which could
bear on the discussion. This isn’t meant to be exhaustive, it’s a guide to get started.

The design problem we’re going to tackle is using two dowels to orient two parts that we
want to mate together. Say we want the dowels to permanently stay in one part. We’ll need
two holes in the first part to hold the dowels, and two ‘holes’ (quotations explained a bit
further down) in the second to receive the dowels when aligning the parts.
Like Comment Share 23 · 6 comments
Messaging

/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-design-guide-alignment-dowels-steven-weinberg 1/5
2020/12/30 Simple design guide: Alignment dowels | LinkedIn (62)

Let’s say that we have determined that M5 dowels make sense

Search
2 for our1design,
59 and we’ll start
Try Premium Free
for 1 Month
by defining the tolerances on the holes that will hold the dowels in the first part. Not
wanting to re-invent the wheel, take a look at the ISO system of fits. There are three basic
classes of fit. A clearance fit is when the tolerances of the shaft and hole are such that the
hole will always be bigger than the shaft (e.g. the hole is 4 +0.002/+0.008, and the shaft is 4
-.006/0, so that the biggest shaft will be 4mm exactly, and the smallest hole will be 4.002).
Conversely, an interference fit is when the smallest shaft will be bigger than the largest hole.
A transition fit is anything in between, when, depending on where the hole and shaft fall out
within their respective acceptable tolerance ranges, the actual fit could be a clearance or an
interference fit.

A ‘fit’ consists of two tolerance zones, one for the hole, and one for the shaft. One without
the other is incomplete, because how things fit together depends on both sides of the
equation. The ISO system has a selection of standard tolerance zones, each designated by a
letter and a number. Tolerance zones for the hole side of things have capital letters, while
tolerance zones for the shaft side of things have lower case letters. The letter tells you what
kind of fit it is. For example, an ‘H’ tolerance means that your hole’s minimum size will be
the nominal size, and the maximum size will be some amount larger than that. The number
designates how tight the tolerance is, with lower numbers being tighter. For example, for a
5mm hole, an H7 hole would have a minimum size of 5.000mm, and a maximum size of
5.012mm, whereas the same hole with an H10 tolerance would still have a 5.000mm
minimum, but the tolerance would be looser, with a 5.048mm upper bound.

We want the pins to stay in the holes, so let’s try for a light press fit. Looking at the
description of preferred fits on the first page of that link above, a ‘Locational Interference’
sounds right. Ok, so our choices are H7/p6 and P7/h6. Problem: Assuming we’re using a
standard metric dowel, our dowel has an m6 tolerance, not a p6 or h6. Neither H7/m6 or
P7/m6 would give us the fit we want. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got. The actual m6
tolerance that we’re dealing with is +.004/+.012. a p6 tolerance for our 5mm dowel is
+.012/+.020. An h6 tolerance is -.008/0. We’re fortunate, in that we are dealing with size ‘6’
tolerances all around, and the total tolerance range is .008mm in all cases.

Since we’re dealing with the same fit, we could really pick either of the given combinations
to work from for our next step, but we’re going to do both, to check our work.

First let’s look at H7/p6. The conversion from the p6 tolerance given and the m6 tolerance
we have in reality is simply to subtract 0.008mm from both ends of the tolerance zone (The
lower end of p6 is +.012, which is 0.008 larger than the +.004 lower end of m6, and the
higher end of p6 is +.020, which is 0.008mm larger than the +.012mm of m6). In order to
get the fit we want, we simply have to subtract the same 0.008mm from the H7 tolerance (in
other words, the pin we have is 0.008mm smaller than the pin described in the given
tolerance, so the hole we use should also be 0.008mm smaller than the holeMessaging
described in the
/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-design-guide-alignment-dowels-steven-weinberg 2/5
2020/12/30 Simple design guide: Alignment dowels | LinkedIn (62)

given tolerance). The H7 tolerance gives 0/+.012, so the actual

Search
2 tolerance
1 for
59 our hole Try Premium Free
for 1 Month
should be -.008/+.004.

Let’s test that value. First, is it actually a press-fit? Our largest hole is 5.004mm. Our
smallest pin is also 5.004mm. Line-to-line at the extreme case counts. Check. Now, is it
actually the same fit as we are looking for? H7/p6, using the smallest pin and largest hole
gives a 5.012mm pin, and a 5.012mm hole. Line-to-line, just like our fit. Check. Median
hole size for H7 is 5.006mm. Median pin size is 5.016mm. The interference is 0.01mm. The
median hole size using our selected tolerance is 4.998mm. The median pin size is 5.008mm.
The interference is 0.01mm. Check. Last test. The smallest hole for H7 is 5.000mm. The
largest pin for p6 is 5.020mm, so the maximum interference for the fit is 0.02mm. Using our
fit, the smallest hole is 4.992mm, and the largest pin is 5.012, also giving a maximum
interference of 0.02mm. Looks like we got what we wanted.

Ok, so to be absolutely sure, let’s quickly take a look at the other option ISO suggests for
this fit, P7/h6. To get from h6 to m6, you add +0.012. The tolerance for P7 is -.020/-.008.
Adding 0.012 gives -0.008/+.004, which is the tolerance that we came out with
before. Looks good.

Let’s proceed to do the same for the other part. In this case, we want a slip fit. Let’s choose a
‘locational clearance’ from the ISO descriptions. We’re looking at an H7/h6 fit. Again, we
simply convert from h6 to the m6 of our actual pin. As we noted one paragraph up, this
entails adding +.012 to our H7 hole tolerance. H7 for a 5mm hole is 0/+.012, so our hole
tolerance for our second part becomes +.012/+.024.

We run through the same checks we did with the first part, and determine that this tolerance
makes sense, but we’re not done. What if our two holes aren’t exactly where they are
supposed to be? What if the space between them is slightly larger or smaller? The pins won’t
fit into the holes in the second part at the same time! Fortunately, there is a common design
trick for just this situation (and now I will explain why, way back at the beginning of the
article, I put ‘holes’ for the second part in quotations). Instead of two holes, we will put a
single hole, and a slot in the second part. The axis of the slot will be along the line between
the two hole positions. Make sure that the slot is long enough to capture the pin, no matter
where the hole distances fall within the tolerances zones of both parts.

I was going to end this with a quick sketch of what the parts might look like, but my
connection to Onshape, which is what I was going to use to punch it out doesn’t seem to be
working. So, I’ll leave it open instead. There may be parts that could be explained better,
perhaps with graphics. If you have any questions, feel free to put them in the comments, and
I’ll try to address them.

Messaging

/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-design-guide-alignment-dowels-steven-weinberg 3/5
2020/12/30 Simple design guide: Alignment dowels | LinkedIn (62)

Cheers!
Search
2 1 59 Try Premium Free
for 1 Month

Report this

Published by
Steven Weinberg 14 articles Follow
Product Development Engineer at C2P-Inc
Published • 3y

Reactions

+11

6 Comments
Most relevant

Add a comment…

Paul Brown • 3rd+ 5mo

Director/Owner at Absalom Classics

I found your post on alignment dowels through Google as I'm in the process of building some production
machinery, and I'm a novice at high-precision - very impressed, and I'll be using the info you've provided.

I thought 'this is unusually good for an article about steel rods' so I read the rest of your articles - strange
how people who deal with dowels appear to have similar thoughts about Tesla hype / 3D printing / …see gender /
more

Like · 1 Reply · 1 Reply

Steven Weinberg • 3rd+ 5mo

Product Development Engineer at C2P-Inc

Thank you

Like Reply

Shubin Chen • 3rd+ 1y

Mechanical Design Engineer at ASML

Have you consider the perpendicularity of the holes to mating surface. If holes are not perpendicular to the
surface, you should consider project tolerance. The hole should be bigger than what you calculated. 

Like Reply · 1 Reply

Steven Weinberg • 3rd+ 1y

Product Development Engineer at C2P-Inc

Thanks for the suggestion.

The scope of this article was to convert the preferred fits in the ISO system for use when you are
using a shaft or hole that does not align with the preference. 

However, to address your specific concern, I'd suggest using a position tolerance of 0 at maximum
…see more

Like Reply

Load more comments

Steven Weinberg
Product Development Engineer at C2P-Inc Messaging

/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-design-guide-alignment-dowels-steven-weinberg 4/5
2020/12/30 Simple design guide: Alignment dowels | LinkedIn (62)

Search
Follow 2 1 59 Try Premium Free
for 1 Month

m Steven Weinberg

rt - Hole Tolerances for Engineers, you may be wasting your Is Tesla a Ponzi Scheme? - Well, kind The biggest news about Wo
els time of Woman's success isn't about
nberg on LinkedIn Steven Weinberg on LinkedIn Steven Weinberg on LinkedIn Steven Weinberg on LinkedIn

rticles

Messaging

/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-design-guide-alignment-dowels-steven-weinberg 5/5