Transport and locking mechanism

This time, I’m sharing a transport and locking mechanism I designed. Let’s dive into a few key principles worth highlighting:

🟢 Green: A purchased locking mechanism designed to connect and disconnect two parts as needed. In my case, I moved a heavy beam along a round rail, allowing the machine operator to position the beam in different locations according to the program.

🔵 Blue: A round rail – why? It’s easy to assemble and enables smooth and precise manual movement along the rail. The rectangular block represents a ruler with holes that I fixed along the rail. Each hole was numbered, allowing the operator to move the beam to its designated position and secure it at the specified number.

🟠 Orange: The final position of the locking mechanism depended on many manufacturing and assembly tolerances. To address this, I mounted the entire mechanism on a dedicated plate. During assembly, I aligned the mechanism with one of the holes on the ruler, locked the screws, drilled the positioning pins, and pressed them into place. This could be done in only one position since the ruler was created with relatively high precision.

Can you guess how I ensured that the pin's final alignment was restricted to just one axis (notice the oval holes)? 

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!