Gage manufacturers and calibration laboratories often find themselves in this minefield. New gages or instruments are supplied or calibrated and immediately returned by the customer because they aren’t correct. This claim is made because the new equipment is rejecting parts—parts that have been continuously produced for twenty years or more without problems. How can you argue with that kind of history? The short answer is that you can’t, but you can argue what that history means even if it is supported by reams of data.
Invariably these situations arise for a couple of reasons. The first is that while repeatability is a requirement of accuracy, it is only a component of it. The second is that the tolerances being claimed have never been met for one reason or another but those tolerances were unrealistic in the first place so the parts would still work if they were outside the tolerance.