Last updated 10 August 2026
The range, every time. A coat five times thicker but held to the same window still leaves the machinist the same working band, .4970 / .4984 instead of .4986 / .5000, just further from the print.
Thickness moves where the band sits. Range decides how wide it is. Those are different costs and only one of them is negotiable: the plater can usually tighten a window, and nobody can make a coating thinner than the specification allows.
So the conversation worth having is not about the number on the print. Ask the plater what they can actually hold, rather than what the specification permits, and take the difference back as tolerance. A .0002 to .0005 window costs .0006 of your band on a both-sided feature before anybody has cut anything, and half of that is often available for the asking.
This is also why a thick deposit is not automatically the harder job. Hard chrome at several thousandths per side shifts a dimension a long way and can still be easier to hold than a flash of nickel quoted with a sloppy range.
| On the print | .4990 / .5010 in |
|---|---|
| Process | Plating |
| The feature | diameter, both surfaces in the process |
| Per side | 0.001 to 0.0013 in |
| The dimension moves | larger at this operation |
| Shift per unit of per-side effect | 2 times |
| Hold before the process | .4970 / .4984 in |
Open this case in the calculator, and change the numbers.
Computed by ctrlPlanner. MIL-STD-870, Federal Screw Thread Specification H28.
This is one characteristic. A real part has forty of them through five operations, and every one needs the same walk when the drawing revises. That is what ctrlPlanner does from a ballooned print.
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