multiwheel carriage

[artag]

I want to build a carriage for a rather heavy gantry.

I can bolt the makerslide to steel section to carry the weight, but I need to share it over multiple delrin wheels. This will only work if they're accurately aligned, or somehow loadshared.

Has anyone got any good solutions for this ?

[canadianavenger]

how heavy? Would hard-coating the makeslide, and using steel wheels instead of delrin work?

[REdington]

I think your best solution would be to do a type 3 hardcoat and use steel wheels. If you want to try the Delrin wheels, all you would have to do is take a piece of alum about 3/16th thick and drill some 5/16th holes inline and parallel for eccentrics. Then use the eccentrics to distribute the load to each wheel.

Rodney

[artag]

The main components of the gantry are a couple of 'isert' stepper-driven units with slides and ballscrews. Together, they weigh about 45 lbs (and that doesn't include a spindle). So to respect the 6lbs per wheel limit I guess I'd need about 5 delrin wheels per side.

I'm not sure of the capabilities of the hard coating : I think I'd rather spread the load than use that, and I'm in the UK, where we have just started to get locally-produced makerslide but hard coating's a few steps away.

I'd probably be better off building this as a fixed gantry / moving bed device, but wanted to consider the practicality of a moving gantry first.

[r691175002]

There is a point where makerslide is no longer the best option.

You can get supported linear rail dirt cheap on ebay and it will be orders of magnitude more precise and rigid than makerslide.
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/linear-bearing-r ... 578wt_1344

If you want specific lengths contact linearmotionbearings2008 on ebay. Chai will get you pretty much anything you need fairly cheaply and combine shipping as well.

He just sold me this stack of components for 150$. Every piece was cut to a non-standard length, and all three ballscrews were custom machined to my drawings on both ends.

[artag]

A fair point, and an attractive price.

I've had these components around for a while and the advent of the UK makerslide seemed like a good opportunity to use them and try it out.

Perhaps I'll use it for a lighter moving-table slider and see what the limitations are.