Description
Parallels come in pairs of two, which are machined to be the same dimensions their corresponding faces. They come in a variety of thicknesses and size, allowing them to be stacked up or to support a workpiece which doesn't have a flat profile. Parallels commonly have a series of holes drilled on the 'front' face - allowing them to be used to position a workpiece or secured using t-slot clamps, and a countersink on each side to remove any sharp edges.
Generally, workshop parallels have 4 faces that are machined and ground - the front, back and sides, although some do have the ends with a smooth surface. The surface of a parallel can often tell how it was manufactured, with a 'grain' showing that it was ground - and a smooth or mirrored finish showing it has been lapped. Parallels that have a good surface tolerance can be lightly bonded together by sliding or rotating two parallels together, and the smooth surfaces allows a temporary molecular-attraction to take place - this is known as Wringing and is also found with gauge blocks.
Read more about this topic: Parallels (engineering)
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)