Yeah. So time to test out my dovetail fixture…..
It works amazingly good. Solid, simple and precise. No audible vibrations of any kind. So that was the good news.
The bad news is that the 4th axis apparently was configured to turn the wrong way. So I got something that was not quite a mirror image of my piece. Had it been a perfect mirror image it would have been fine, but alas. One more piece for the garbage bin.
In addition, I realize that the small and deep hollows that I want in this piece are simply not possible to do in aluminum with the mister that we have. I would need proper flood coolant to clear away all of the chips.
So in a way, I am glad that more than one thing went wrong.
So what to do now?
I will redesign the robot chassis to be made up of plastic parts reinforced with aluminum tubes. I will also give 3d printing a shot and print a complete set of pieces and build the entire thing. Then I can decide if I want to mill the plastic pieces from Delrin for the final version or not.