My linear motion rails

I haven't seen this done, yet - I choose 8020 40mm x 40mm extrusion, laid ground and polished 6mm (or 1/4 inch) in the T slots, used 3 SG20 U groove ball bearings, the makerslide aluminum plate and adjusting nut, and put it all together.



I seems to work quite well - the aluminum extrusion I bought was very straight (seemed to be on the order of .001 over 455mm of the 40x40). With ground and polished rods having better than .001" tolerance, and the bearings which should have low runout, the overall result seems quite good.

I have built a cartesian printer around using that for the X and Z axes, but I used extrusion mounted ground rods for the table.

I think it will work very well with leadless ballscrews (check thingverse) to provide cheap, accurate and precise linear motion.

When I get my printer working, I hope to try it out.

Paul

ITEM makes an extrusion that holds a 6 mm rod in a slot. You might look at that