I finally learned how to properly drill aluminum extrusion. There are so many things that aren't adequately explained online. I had borrowed a drill from my father in law and dulled a few bits before I figured out that when people said "go slow" with aluminum, they mean literally slower than his fancy drill can go. I had to go buy a $40 drill that went as slow as possible, and even then only barely squeeze the trigger.

But! That was the final blocker for a lot of progress on building the machine. Finally all the extrusions are prepared, and I managed to slam together about half of the build instructions. Then I hit some parts I haven't bought yet, so I'm blocked again. But I did find two complains.

First, the misumi rails potentially have an incompatible cross-section. The M3x6 blind screws bottom out before they get tight enough to bind. I used some shims to fix it, and I'm hoping that that doesn't bite me later.

The much bigger issue is that the 3007 fan is extremely fragile and it goes into the mini afterburner with a press fit. I demolished the face plate of the fan. And taking the fans out once they are in is even harder than putting them in. I get that the mini afterburner is designed to be ... mini, but this is the first part I consider bad rather than a minor inconvenience. I will be getting a new fan and more of the parts I hadn't obtained yet.

On some good news, wanting to print the skirts in a similar quality to the PIF parts made me finally dig in and tune the hell out of my Ender 3V2. It can now print in 0.2mm layer height at a really good quality! I only trust it to do PLA, but that shouldn't matter for the skirts, and there are some other designs I have that can benefit from the higher level of detail as well.