[apalrd]

A waterjet has adequate tolerances for an FRC gearbox.

We can tolerate some amount of slop by adding 0.003" or so between centers.

We usually waterjet the holes a tiny bit undersized and then manually file them to be on size for the bearings. We oversize the non-bearing holes slightly (bolts and such), or undersize them quite a bit and drill them out.

IMHO, we will probably never do that again for drive gearboxes now that we can buy a plastic case VexPro shifter that's lighter, has better ratio spreads, handles 3 CIMS already, and is cheap. We used to make custom plates for Andy's Gen1 gearboxes because the AM plates were steel, then when he started making aluminum plates we continued to make our own so we could integrate them as part of the chassis panels.