Stainless Steel Pins – When Use Them?

In mechanics, the stainless steel pins are mechanical element that needs an extremely accurate coupling. It may has the conical, cylindrical or spiral form.

Stainless steel pins: all usage.

Stainless steel pins are produced according to very strict tolerances; this also applies to thecorresponding holes, that they are typically machined processed by reaming.

The stainless steel pins may have:

a diameter less than the corresponding hole. So, the pin can freely insert itself
or a larger diameter. So, the pin they can be planted in their hole.

Here’s an example: a 6 mm pin is typically processed with a tolerance of 0.005 mm. So, the corresponding 6 mm hole may be made:

so as to allow the free insertion of the pins (e.g. with a real increased size of 0.01 mm)
or interlocking (e.g. with a real lesser size of 0.01)

Stainless steel pins: what happens if you don’t use them?

If unused stainless steel pins during the alignment of mechanical components (e.g. even though they are only connected with bolts) there may be a significant variation (or “play”) of the same components. The industrial tolerances for bolts threads and typical drilling and milling operations introduce a minimum play of 0.2 mm, for bolts with threads up to 10 mm. Indeed, when pins are used together with bolts, the play decreased approximately to 0.01 mm.