It seems like every day on discord there’s another person trying to create a custom linear slider, none with much success. A linear slider lift design has fewer gears, a more linear power curve, significantly less weight and size, and the potential for more height. Linear sliders also have applications on other subsystems that require a locking mechanism or a 1 time deploy. However, the steel sliders vex sells are not suitable for these applications. The biggest issue is the extreme amount of friction these parts have, but they also are heavy and somewhat flimsy. A better slider would be aluminum, use rollers or smooth metal to reduce friction, and have much less slop. Not only would this product sell well, but it would increases Vex’s educational value since elevator lifts are often seen in the real world on forklifts etc. Please consider adding this to the new parts for this upcoming year.
+1 to this idea. To add to the long list of benefits, it would also decrease design convergence since there will be another good linear lift besides scissor and DR4B.
Well I made the mistake last year of trying a level 2 linear slide lift. It bent all over the place, I would be in favor of a better linear slide system
@dana
It mainly starts to get flimsy if you make a 2 or more stage linear shaft length lift. as the little bit they can shift on the slides really multiplies the more stages you use.
I tried one too, a lot of the play is since the plastic blocks are loose on the metal. They have to be to reduce friction, but it makes for a lot of play
If you use a little ingenuity (and some modification and/or third party components) you can use the current parts to easily make a linear slide. I don’t have one built currently, but it is possible. May try and get a model built and pictures taken to show my model.