Jim,
Great post. I have spent the last almost 40 years building rocket engines for many of the most complicated and advanced space and weapon systems ever built. I have used almost every manufacturing and metal joining technique known from ancient times to the most modern technology to fabricate parts out of almost any material you can think of from ceramics and balsa wood to carbon /carbon, to high temperature metal alloys, to vapor phase niobium.
Each time a new technique comes along, there are always a few that try to make simple parts by complicated processes and to universally apply one technique to any manufacturing task...no matter how ill adapted it might be. I have always found that a combination of techniques, some modern, some ancient, some in between, is usually the fastest and best way to make quality parts from given materials. Your description of combining near net cast parts with the precision of CNC for surfacing and hole placement, drilling, taping, turning, etc., sounds like the best utilization of available manufacturing processes to produce a quality lock with the minimum of touch labor and maximum accuracy.
Bravo Zulu !!
