Umm.. This might be a stupid question, but do you all make a double edged open rail or do you need to use two singles sandwiched together to make a double? In the photos on the open rail purchase page there is an image of what looks to be a single rail with fillets on both sides. In other words, this: <====> Thanks, J
Correct, back to back, the recess allows them to slot together Checkout the Openrail video to learn more: - double stack is around 0min32 seconds
Hi Peter, Thank you for your fast reply. TBH, I'm a little confused. Being somewhat unfamiliar with the OpenBuilds / OpenRail environment I was under the assumption that it was a less expensive environment for rapidly producing machines. The whole ecosystem looks nice and seems to work well together. My confusion is with the pricing of these rails. They just seem way out of line and it makes me wonder if I'm not understanding something correctly. A quick scan on Amazon gave me a set of two 1M supported hardened steel rods with four recirculating bearings for a price of $40. Now, I understand that you sometime get crap on Amazon, but it makes me question if I might be missing something. It seems like the same configuration using the Open system would cost about $28 for the four rails alone and then you need to add in the carriages for an added $30 each. Please understand, I'm not trying to disparage the system. It really does look cool. I'm just wondering if I'm missing something? Thanks, Jessica
Well, I was asking you a different question. I wanted to know if I was missing something. It seems I wasn't missing anything at all. -J
Depends on what you're trying to do. OpenRail is pretty cheap and can be mounted to anything. There are many vendors producing the old "internal-V" wheels that run on them. Linear shaft (what you found on Amazon) is cheap and strong, but can be loud, requires lubrication, at least two shafts to prevent rotation, and a solid frame to mount it to. V-Slot is less cheap and less strong, but it's inherently its own structure- C-Beam is pretty **** strong by aluminum extrusion standards. Linear rail is the gold standard of precision motion, but it's quite expensive, requires lubrication, and has to be mounted to a frame (but you can use single rails for some things). As with all things in machine-building, you use the tool for the job.
