A wooden or metal peg that fits into two corresponding holes to join two adjacent parts. Also called: dowel pin. Hardened and precisely shaped dowel pins are used to keep machine components in accurate alignment; they are also used as location guides for adjacent machine parts and to keep the two sections of a punch and die in alignment. At its simplest, a dowel pin is just a solid cylinder of material, which is inserted through a hole. When a dowel pin is inserted through concentric holes in two or more components, it locates and holds them together.
The dowel pin is specially designed based on hole size, tolerance and ductility. Grooved dowel pins feature grooves along the side for various applications. If the grooves run along only a portion of the pin, the smooth end allows the connected unit to rotate freely. Dowel pins are used to align the parts of a machine to ensure extreme precision and accuracy. Manufacturing machines require precision and accuracy. With dowel pins, the parts of a manufacturing machines can be safely joined and aligned together to achieve the necessary precision and accuracy.
The principle behind doweling is simple: small round but evenly cut sticks of wood, called dowels, are inserted into perfectly matched holes in corresponding boards that, when glued in place, provide a strong, durable woodworking joint. To put it simply, according to ASME’s standards a dowel pin has been manufactured correctly if it has a hardness of at least 60 on the case and a level of solidity between 47 and 58 for the core.
