To verify the functionality of the barrel cam, a portion of the arm was rapid-prototyped.
After de-waxing, the parts were assembled and the mechanism checked by moving the cam through its range of motion. The rotation worked as expected, although we discovered a few other issues from the model. First, the combination of the split design (which makes capturing the bearings easier) and the thin arm sections (seen on the left side of the picture above) makes the arm less rigid than the previous cylindrical design. Second, any deformation of the arm in the area of the cam will tend to make it bind. In the next iteration, another thin beam will be added to attempt to stiffen this area sufficiently.