Do Edmunds’ CT-derived error measurements reflect the mechanism’s original manufacturing errors?

Ascertain whether the tooth-position and eccentricity error values reported by Edmunds from computed tomography measurements accurately represent the Antikythera Mechanism’s original manufacturing errors, as opposed to being inflated by corrosion, measurement resolution limits, or fragmentary preservation.

Background

The authors’ combined model predicts frequent jamming if the gears had the error magnitudes measured by Edmunds, implying either the device was non-functional or the original errors were smaller than reported. They argue the latter is plausible due to corrosion over two millennia, CT resolution limitations, and incomplete gear geometry in the fragments.

This leads to an explicit unresolved question about the fidelity of present-day measurements to the mechanism’s original state, motivating further methodological work to refine such measurements.