A lot has happened since the last update, on the one hand I got the carousel working at the end of last week, but then on the other there's been a serious alignment problem.
To get the bad news out of the way, somehow, even though I used templates straight from my digital model, the centre MDF piece is lopsided, and as a result this has had a knock on effect of everything which surrounds it, most importantly the CAM. The now realised off centre CAMs and MDF piece:
As it is lopsided, the above slot for the vertical poles to slide down doesn't accurately follow the CAM, and in other places falls off it. Being only 6mm wide, there isn't enough room for this leeway, so I've had to extend it's width by sandwiching the original CAM with two 5mm lasercut and then heatbent acrylic pieces, I've yet to get a photo of this, but I will for the next update.
The problem doesn't end there, as the original CAM was only 6mm wide and sandwiched between two higher matching styrene profiles, to create a trench, I could use circular vertical poles, as the wheel they'd be attached to would prevent it from going on its side (a massive problem with my mock up). But now the width has been extended to 16mm, this prevention is useless, so I've had to redesign them so that they are now more square thus unable to rotate. This does have its upsides though as due to the cartoonish nature of the carousel, these poles were going to be heat bent, and for the wheels to be attached they'd have to be milled at one edge. But now these poles are made up of a 3mm profile sandwiched between 1mm thinner profiles, which will be filled so that it has somewhat rounded corners. Its cutout in the base is slightly larger than this, but due to the square sides and edges it prevents it from rotating. Photos to better describe this fix will be uploaded tomorrow.
Moving onto the good news, getting it to work. This started with lathing the aluminium bar to create a hole in one edge for the rod from the motor to slide up to. A perpendicular hole was then drilled to penetrate this hole, and this hole was threaded in turn so that a screw could be fitted. The rod from the motor has one flat side (which doesn't show up too well in the photos) which is meant for an external screw to go up against. All in all this prevents the bar from freely rotating while attached.
The bar attached to the motor:
The hole in the edge where the rod slots up:
The blurry flat edge of this rod:
In celebration of it working, and the top piece successfully rotating the bottom one I recorded a short video. Even though this was the moment that highlighted the alignment issue, it is still worth noting.
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