Is there such a thing as specifying too much tolerance?

Have you ever seen that movie where the little teeny tiny car is driving through some Italian city and it turns down an alley and the alley gets narrower and narrower and narrower until the car gets stuck? It's hilarious. But that is not funny when the car is a custom part and the alley is your product. This is all about tolerances that you need.

You see in developing your product we need to have a conversation about tolerances what are the tolerances you're going to need in any product made in any different manufacturing process that are going to be necessary to make that product successful. Can the tolerance on your print be too tight?

So one day I'm talking to a customer we're looking at the print. Now keep in mind that the width of a human hair is about 7 thousandths of an inch, well on this print every dimension that the customer had was in ten thousands of an inch I mean we're talking very tight tolerances! I mean something that even NASA wouldn't require and every dimension was like that... super tight.

The customer was getting quotes back from manufacturers that were exorbitantly expensive they were so expensive, it was going to kill the project!

Well after having a conversation with the customer, we realized that the tight tolerances weren't necessary the only thing that was necessary was that this part needed to fit with another part together nice and tight and they needed to be able to rotate and the customer needed to feel them click in place. That was it, there was no need for the extra cost that was specified in the print.

So in the long run, what the print could not convey was that instead of moving all the houses in the alley, we opted for a thinner car.