Yes. Clearly shown in the photo. Linear rail.Has that got a far side track to support a longer, cantilever arm?
Yes. Clearly shown in the photo. Linear rail.
No this sort of thing.Unistrut?
I have to get it working firstGood news , all cutting projects can now be sent to @fizzy and he can arrange transport as well
Good luck with that one,IF the other half gives me any time to myself
No driven just one end. There is virtually no drag. Can easily be moved with your little finger. If it proves to be a problem I will add drive to the other side.Is the 'carriage' driven at both ends? Last 3-axis machine we built (about 6.5m long and 1.5m wide) was rack and pinion drive on one side only with the other end on square linear rail. The carriage wouldn't drive smoothly, it moved at the driven end then suddenly the other end would come unstuck and whip forward, and repeat that process all the way along. Looked gash and made a mess of the readings (it was carrying an ultrasonic probe for immersion testing of long bar stock).
In the end I fixed it by removing the linear rail and just having a bearing rolling along a ground steel flat track. The drive side had square linear rail as well.
Despite the rack & pinion drive it gave better than 0.2mm repeatability along the 6m traverse - but it wouldn't have been ideal in a CNC cutting application as the changes of direction would be messed up by play in the rack. The pinion was driven by a servo/stepper motor with reduction box and closed-loop motion detection and gave an impressive amount of force - you really had to try to make the carriage stop by hand. The original version was a standard stepper through reduction but if the carriage stalled the control system didn't know about it; the servo-stepper drive would give a fault signal back to the controller if the number of steps moved didn't match the number of pulses received.