Pin gage identification in a small CNC/Screw machine job shop

Pin gage identification

I am looking for some advice regarding pin gage identification.
I work for a small CNC/Screw machine job shop. The standard pin gages sets we use for production range
from .011 – 1.000 ( pretty common).The problem I am having is with identifying the gages for our calibration program. Often I will have multiple jobs running on the shop floor that require the use of the same pin gages. Thus, requiring multiple sets of pin gages. If I am to track calibration results and status I must be able to identify the individual gages. I could scribe or etch the end of the pins on some of the larger gages but this does not seem very practical with smaller pins. Anyone willing to share how they have handled this?

Thanks!

How about different colored metal marking paint on the ends of the pins if you have mulitple sets of gages.

Seems simple...

I don't know if this would be applicable to your floor or not but we keep our pin gage "sets" as sets. Each set has a unique gage number assigned to it. In order to use a pin from any given set, the part must be taken to the area.

We also have "loose" pins arranged in bins by size in our calibration office. If production desires a pin to be located at the machine or inspection location, the pin is put into a plug gage handle and issued its unique gage number. It's a little extra work, but seems to work fine for us.

By the way - Welcome to the Cove

Bill

Pin Gage Identification

Hi Tholian

I went thru the same thing in our shop as bob suggested colored coded paint worked great. We have two complete sets of plus pins I use a different color for each and another color for all the misc pins (minus, metric and spare plus pins) also I keep them in the bags they arrive in and mark the bags (y .036+ a, y .036+ b, (y meaning yellow) also for the smaller pins that do not have ID numbers laser etched at the time of purchase when I take them out of the bag to use, I put little tags around them with tape identified with the ID number. (They stay really good considering the shop is full of oil) when I check them back in they go back in the bag. This has been working real good for over two years now and we lose very few smaller pins by using tape tags.


GOOD LUCK!!!

Do you mean standard Go and No GO plug gauges?

another thought

tholian,

We have only one set, but what we do is we calibrate before each use. In other words, when we pull a pin to use, we check it with a micrometer. This saves us from lots of paperwork and tracking. This may not work for a lot of people, but we are a sheet metal fabricator, strickly commercial, and it does the job.

lee01,
No, we are talking about pin gage sets, with each pin is incrmented, usually by .001.

Hope this helps,
CarolX

Sounds Good to Me

I am doing exactly the same thing Bill Ryan is doing. My calibration software has each individual pin called out for calibration.

Hope this helps.

Welcome to the Cove.

Jay

All single pin gauges need to be engraved with the nominal size on each gauge.

I think that its standard that all these gauges are engraved either on an end all in the middle of the gauge.

I have just looked at ours and they are engraved in the middle of the gauge.

Thomas

Thomas_Crown said:

All single pin gauges need to be engraved with the nominal size on each gauge.

I think that its standard that all these gauges are engraved either on an end all in the middle of the gauge.

I have just looked at ours and they are engraved in the middle of the gauge.

Thomas

Click to expand...

Welcome to the Cove
Just curious - how do you engrave on a .020" pin (much less be able to read it easily)? I took a look at a couple of our sets and there isn't any engraving on anything less than .060" (same with the metric set). In our "loose pin bins" we put a piece of masking tape around the pin with the size written on it.

We order our pins through Meyer Gage and they etch a serial # on all of their pins over 0.60", this helps with identifing loose pins in the shop. We also label our sets with "verify pins with a micrometer before use".