I was hoping to glue a standoff and guide rod today, but some problems have reared their heads. Story follows:

Upon first placng the optic into the standoff gluing fixture, I was presented with a geometric problem. In the assembly procedure, one glues the rods before the magnets, which prevents a situation like this:

When what you want to do is this:

So, I spun the optic around such that the magnet is on the far side of the scribe line from the side arm, and instead of extending the side arm past the scribe line, will bring it back towards the near side. I also swapped the arms of the fixture such that the guide rod will be glued on the opposite side of the optic than the side magnet, so the side magnet won't get in the way when doing the pitch adjustment of the second standoff.

Then, I found the scribed ruby rods, and took a look at one under a microscope. The groove looks nice and sharp. I placed the standoff in the side arm of the fixture.

However, the fact that the groove does not go all the way around the standoff leads to problem #1: when adjusting the position of the side arm, the standoff seems to roll around unpredictably, making it hard to deterministically position it while keeping the groove facing outwards. 

Problem #2 is not too surprising give Steve's finding about the guide rod holding arm in ELOG 12264. Given that the tip is banged up, the guide rod does not sit straight in the arm, making it crooked. This would lead to the second standoff's groove not being well aligned to the suspension wire.

I will meditate on solutions to these problems... I have covered the optic and fixture with the same foil hut Koji made on Friday.

Also, I peeked at the aluminum standoffs under the microscope. Since the groove goes all the way around, we don't really know where the wire was seated before. Still, there are some places where the groove looks kind of worn: