Last updated 10 August 2026
No. Both faces of a shoulder depth are plated and both move the same way, so the depth between them is unchanged and the machinist holds the print limits as they are.
Almost every allowance question has an answer that is a number. This one has an answer that is zero, and it is worth knowing because the reflex is to correct for the coating on every dimension the process touches. Here the coating lands on the shoulder face and on the face the depth is measured from, both move outward by the same amount, and the distance between them does not change.
The same is true of anything measured between two surfaces that get the same treatment: a groove width, a slot depth from a coated face, the gap between two plated bosses. What breaks it is asymmetry. Mask one face, machine one after plating, or measure to a face that is not in the tank, and it becomes a one-sided correction at the full per-side figure rather than none at all.
This is also why the direction is something you tell the calculator rather than something it works out. Grow and shrink can be reasoned from the geometry once you know whether it is a bore or an outside surface. Nothing about the shape of a part says that the process runs and this particular dimension does not move: only somebody who knows what is masked can say that.
| On the print | .4990 / .5010 in |
|---|---|
| Process | Plating |
| The feature | length, both surfaces in the process |
| The dimension moves | not at all at this operation |
| Hold before the process | .4990 / .5010 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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