Colchester Bantam CNC conversion dry fit - does it actually go together?

So let's see what we got here ie will the damned things go together? The CAD assembly was fairly convincing, enough for me to machine up all the parts. And most of those have fitted together reasonably well so far - for the cross slide (X axis) assembly mainly. The next assembly is the Z axis. I've made up most of the parts so let's have a go at assembling it.

The first challenge is figuring out the position of the fixing holes for the Z axis ballscrew brackets. I struggled a bit to figure out how to extract the vertical dimension for the M6 holes that hold the brackets to the bed. Then the penny dropped - you view the component from the front and then fit dimensions to that drawing. 

Here we are. Both ends drilled and tapped. The biggest uncertainty was the horizontal distance. In the same way that I struggled to measure that up for the CAD work, I also struggle to measure it now. I've deliberately included about 1mm slop in each direction for the ballnut yoke but the lateral movement required is closer to 5mm. 

I have some 1/4" cold rolled plate that is just what the doctor ordered. Got those manually squared up and drileld out on The Shiz.

And deburred

That did the trick. It seems to assemble without any fuckups. Pleasingly, the backlash is too small to measure on this Kurt branded Chinesium indicator.

The end stop is formed by the carriage hitting the ballscrew bracket, as planned. The other parts don't clash.

The glass encoder scale also fits - almost. The fixing holes in my brackets are about 2-3mm too far apart. I will fix these with a shim on the right hand (in this pic) bracket which does little apart from support the end of the scale.

And here's the cross slide (X axis) motor and bracket in place. Yes, it sticks out the back a bit but I always knew it would.

That will do for now. I'll now remove the motors and connect them up with the LinuxCNC controls. I may also need to start thinking about a control cabinet at some point soon.