Answered: Can oversized plastic washers count toward the plastic sheet allowance?

[FullMetalMentor]

I bet I’m not alone when I say that I’m sometimes worn out trying to help kids tweezer into place their last thin high-strength plastic spacer on a high-strength shaft, thanks to the tightly-fitting square hole of the spacer needing to align perfectly with the square shaft. One solution has been to create home-made spacers with round holes and cut these from the plastic in their allowed 12" x 24" plastic sheet.

I recently found a washer made from nylon that is 0.067" thick (or less) and, therefore, if this washer were home made from the allowed 12" x 24" plastic sheet, I believe it would be allowable under <R7>f. My question is this: could the kids use this type of plastic washer if they were to subtract from their allowed 12" x 24" plastic sheet the same amount of plastic that these washers would consume if they were to cut them by hand?

Here is the washer I’m talking about: McMaster-Carr

Thanks.

[Karthik]

@FullMetalMentor

I bet I’m not alone when I say that I’m sometimes worn out trying to help kids tweezer into place their last thin high-strength plastic spacer on a high-strength shaft, thanks to the tightly-fitting square hole of the spacer needing to align perfectly with the square shaft. One solution has been to create home-made spacers with round holes and cut these from the plastic in their allowed 12" x 24" plastic sheet.

I recently found a washer made from nylon that is 0.067" thick (or less) and, therefore, if this washer were home made from the allowed 12" x 24" plastic sheet, I believe it would be allowable under <R7>f. My question is this: could the kids use this type of plastic washer if they were to subtract from their allowed 12" x 24" plastic sheet the same amount of plastic that these washers would consume if they were to cut them by hand?

Here is the washer I’m talking about: McMaster-Carr

Provided no other rules are violated in the process, this would be legal.