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Part number
A part number (often abbreviated P/N, PN, part no., or part #) is an identifier of a particular part design used in a particular industry. Its purpose is to simplify referencing to that part. A part number unambiguously identifies a part design within a single corporation, and sometimes across several corporations. For example, when specifying a screw, it is easier to refer to "HSC0424PP" than saying "Hardware, screw, machine, 4-40, 3/4" long, panhead, Phillips". In this example, "HSC0424PP" is the part number, and it may be prefixed in database fields as "PNHSC0424PP" or "P/NHSC0424PP".
Part number The Aerospace Industries Association maintains the NAS system (National Aerospace Standards), which is gradually replacing the AN and MS systems.
Dash numbers
There is a strong tradition in part numbering practice, in use across many corporations, to use suffixes consisting of a "dash" followed by a number comprising 1 or 2 digits (occasionally more). These suffixes are called dash numbers, and they are a common way of logically associating a set of detail parts or subassemblies that belong to a common assembly or part family. For example, the part numbers 12345-1, 12345-2, and 12345-3 are three different dash numbers of the same part family. In precise typographical and character encoding terms, it is actually a hyphen, not a dash, that is usually used; but the word "dash" is firmly established in the spoken and written usage of the engineering and manufacturing professions; "dash number", not "hyphen number", is the standard term. This comes from the era before computers, when most typographical laypeople did not need to differentiate the characters or glyphs precisely. Some companies follow a convention of circling the dash numbers on a drawing, such as in view designators and subpart callouts.
Part number
Parametric families of parts, and tabulations of part numbers with parameter values
Often machinery design requires a set of variations on a common theme. In such cases, a single drawing may include a tabulation, in which each row represents one of the part numbers, and each column provides a parameter value for it. A simple example might be for a family of screws:
Dash number Length Thread size Drive style -1 -2 -3 10mm 15mm 20mm M6 M7 M8 Philips Slotted Socket hex
Part number
Symmetrical parts
Many assemblies with reflection symmetry, such as the fuselages and wings of aircraft, the hulls of ships and boats, and the bodies of cars and trucks, require matched pairs of parts that are identical, or nearly identical, except for being mirror images of each other. (For example, the left and right wings of an airplane, or the left and right fenders or doors of a car.) Often these related parts are designated left-hand (LH) and right-hand (RH) parts. It is a common practice to give them sequential dash numbers, or -LH and -RH part number suffixes. It is also not uncommon to show only one of them on the drawing, and to define the symmetrical counterpart simply by stating that it is "opposite". Common notations include "left-hand shown, right-hand opposite" or "-1, LH (shown); -2, RH (opposite)".
Phantom parts
The term phantom part is sometimes used to describe a series of parts that collectively make up an assembly or subassembly. This concept is helpful in the database management of engineering and production (such as in product data management applications) when it is useful to think of a certain combination of subparts as "one part" (and thus one database record) for ordering, production, or billing purposes.
Synthetic parts
It is common in the engineering of parts, subassemblies, and higher assemblies to treat the definition of a certain part as a very well-defined concept, with every last detail controlled by the engineering drawing or its accompanying TDP documents. This is necessary because of the separation of concerns that often exists in production, in which the maker of each part (whether an in-house department or a vendor) does not have all the information needed to decide whether any particular small variation is acceptable or not (that is, "whether the part will still work" or "whether it will still fit into the assembly" interchangeably). The sizes of fillets and edge breaks are common examples of such details where production staff must say, "it may easily be trivial, but it could possibly matter, and we're not the ones who can tell which is true in this case". However, a challenge to this paradigm (of perfectly frozen part definition) is that sometimes it is necessary to obtain a part that is "mostly like" part A but that also incorporates some of the features of parts B and C. For example, a new variant of model of next-higher assembly may require this. Although this "blending" of part designs could happen very informally in a non-mass-production environment (such as an engineering lab, home business, or prototyping toolroom), it requires more forethought when the concerns are more thoroughly separated (such as when some production is outsourced to vendors). In the latter case, a new part definition, termed a synthetic part (because its definition synthesizes features from various other parts), is created. Ideally it is then formally defined with a new drawing; but often in the imperfect reality of the business world, to save time and expense, an improvised TDP will be prepared for it consisting of several existing drawings and some notes about which features to synthesize.
Part number
References
partnumber.com [1] Significant Part Number assignment utility Design Chain Associates [2] and BPIC [3] at the Wayback Machine (archived July 22, 2011), arguing against intelligent part numbering systems
External links
Part Number Database [4]
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] http:/ / partnumber. com/ http:/ / www. designchainassociates. com/ pdf/ DCAipns0602. pdf http:/ / web. archive. org/ 20110722231830/ http:/ / www. bpic. co. uk/ faq/ part_nos. htm http:/ / partnumber. org/
License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported //creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/