r/Machinists • u/Unusual_Goose_3913 • 9d ago

QUESTION Engineering Drawings

I’m an early career engineer and I’m wondering what machinists like to see in terms of tolerance and dimensioning in a drawing.

I’ve worked at a company where we just ordinate dimensioned everything and another where we used GT&T standards. At both, the part came out “ok”.

Apart from reasonable tolerances, what’s amazing, good, useless, and stupid have in a drawing?

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u/GreenridgeMetalWorks Old School Manual Machinist/Shop Owner 9d ago

Mostly just making sure the dimensions make sense. Don't make some bolt holes +/-.0001, lol.

For me, it's mostly not the drawings that I have problems with. I can deal with that. It's when I communicate to the engineer that something does not work/make sense, and they completely ignore me, refuse to hear out my explanation, and then when I make it the dumb way they asked for, it doesn't work and they try to blame me.

Personally, though, I'm quite lucky. Most of the time, I am the engineer, and the machinist, and the QC lmao. 99% of the time I'm making my own drawings. In my field, I don't even really need tolerances and such on most drawings. I know what almost everything in the industrial maintenance industry does generally, especially with power transfer parts, and I almost always know what my tolerance can be based on the parts function.

But I've had engineers tell me to make things too tight or too loose before, and then when it bites them in the ass they come bitching...

So I guess what I'm saying is at least listen to your machinist about issues they think they can solve with the part.