Washers in a standard and special design at MISUMI

Washers can be found in varied areas of system and machinery construction.. Depending on the type of system, they must be special requirements. The MISUMI washer range offers a broad range of different designs, materials and specifications in order to meet this broad range of requirements.

The standard design made of metal is available in two materials: Steel (bronzed or chemically nickel-plated) and stainless steel. External and internal diameters are configurable:

Furthermore, the depth of the washer can also be configured; here 1 to 10mm can be selected.

The precision design offers the same configuration possibilities as the standard washers but can be configured in terms of depth in 0.5mm steps.

Heat insulating washers are available for the mounting of heat insulating components. Here it is important that the sleeves and washers have different lamination directions. Accordingly, the mechanical stability varies depending on the direction of lamination:

Sleeves with and without flange are laminated in radial direction. Please observe that the mechanical stability is lower than that of the washer:

Ceramic washers also offer heat insulating properties and high heat resistance up to 1300C°.

Square washers are excellent for connection and mounting tasks.

They can be equipped with one or two counter bores.

MISUMI offers extra thin washers for particularly space-saving solutions. Furthermore, these offer a high abrasion resistance in addition to their very low depth of 0.13 to 1.0mm. Polyacetal, fluroplastic and polycarbonate are available materials.

Shim rings exist in various inner and outer diameter combinations and thicknesses. They serve to reach a certain height level and can fill or adjust gaps between round components.

In automotive production, shims perform a similar function to shim rings and are used in many applications in various production steps (e.g.: body-in-white productionor powertrain manufacturing). For example, the position (X,Y,Z) of the locators or locating pins is adjusted by means of shim rings. This is achieved by varying the thickness of the tuning discs. In the automotive industry, there are different standards which differ, for example, in hole spacing, radius, thickness and hole diameter. One of these standards is the North American Automotive Metric Standard (NAAMS), where dimensions are standardized and precisely named. In Germany, each OEM usually follows its own standard and there is no uniform agreement, which means that different requirements are placed on the shims.

Example applications Shim Pack:

Here you can see how the position of the locating pin is determined in two directions (X,Z) with the help of two shim packs. As a rule, the shim packs in the clamping and measuring fixtures are scheduled from the outset in order to compensate for tolerances or production fluctuations. Particularly in prototype construction, such shim packs enable a continuous improvement process to be implemented by the employee approaching the desired quality target one shim at a time. However, the shim packs are also used in series production in order to be able to carry out tolerance compensation and position adjustment in this production process as well.

Overview of further standard components for automotive production