Anybody ever checked out BiSlide?

[devers6]

I was googling around today, and happened onto this site:

www.bislide.com

I know it's not as heavy-duty as say a THK rail system, but something about it strikes me as DIY-friendly. The way the rail profile lends itself to being combined using built-in T-slots and clips, room for a leadscrew, etc. It's kind of like an Erector Set for CNC! I found a pricing guide on the site that was back around 2001, and of course the pricing is astronomical for ready-built slide assemblies with leadscrews, carrier, motor mounts, and such; but way down at the bottom there was pricing for the extrusion at about $2.20 an inch (they don't say it is the guide extrusion - they call it 'structural' or 'framing', but if you look at some of the examples it looks like they construct frames and bases out of the same extrusion as the guide). It would seem to be pretty cool to be able to buy a length of extrusion, cut it into the sizes you need for a machine, and hack together a carrier/leadscrew mechanism to meet your own needs.

Has anyone ever used these, or know much about the company? I'd be interested in a little bit of groupthink as to whether this stuff seems worthwhile before I go to the next step of contacting the company for quoting, etc.

Brainstorming a little bit - if for whatever reason this particular extrusion doesn't seem appropriate, I'd like to know a little bit about the economics of custom extrusions. Does anyone know what typical NRE charges are for a new extrusion, say in a 5" circle die size; what is a typical minimum order lot size, how are extrusions priced (by the pound, the foot?) I'm almost certain you probably couldn't cover it with the typical hobbyist 'group buy' thing, but I have a couple of gears spinning in my head that make me think that there might be a niche business here - where you could buy linear guide extrusion by the inch, along with the parts such as end caps, motor mounts, leadscrews, carriers, etc. If you could get started with maybe $50K in NRE and an initial order of 500 feet or so, there might be enough interest here in a place like CNCZone to be reason enough to do a little market research, work up a spreadsheet, and head off the the bank. I may be way off base here - but you guys tell me. That's what a place like this is for, right?