Reply with QuoteMakerSlide has been sold for months now, the guy just does batch orders because of the time it takes him to cut all the orders. It started as a Kickstarter project...no idea why its still active on that sight.
www.store.makerslide.com
"Makerslide" ... Interesting alternative rails
Inventables.com is taking pre-orders for Makerslide. Looks like an awesome alternative to commercial rails. From watching all the videos at their website about the rails, and reading up on their site, they look perfect for the hobbyist (me) or someone building their own customer CNC equipment (me - I want to build a CNC rig for a very specific application). The rails look easy to work with, offering lower-cost with more flexibility and ease-of-use than other stuff I've worked with.
The disclaimer here is that I am no CNC expert. I just have taken the CNC and Autodesk Inventor and CAD/CAM courses at TechShop and done a tool & die project with Tormach 1100 at their Menlo Park, California facility. I have dabbled a bit in building custom low-end CNC equipment for my RC hobby - enough to know about some of the costs and hassles. Based on my experiences attempting to build low-end CNC stuff, and seeing the videos and text at the Inventables, for these rails, I've ordered a couple "Makerslide" rails to build a custom CNC rig for a particular use.
As with my recent post to announce the Shapeoko open-source CNC machine at Inventables, I am not associated with Inventables nor profiting, nor marketing for them in any capacity beyond my own interests, specifically, to get the word out, so the products I've ordered for myself achieve enough pre-orders to kick off production, so I can get my stuff sooner :-)
But beyond my own selfish interests, I think this stuff is awesome as a lower cost way for tinkerers to get or build CNC equipment and I assume others will agree.
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MakerSlide has been sold for months now, the guy just does batch orders because of the time it takes him to cut all the orders. It started as a Kickstarter project...no idea why its still active on that sight.
www.store.makerslide.com
Originally Posted by tjb1
Do you have any thoughts on the product vs. other more common rail solutions? Looks impressive to me, but I'm curious about the thoughts of more experienced people in the community. The assumption I'm making is this is an easier and less inexpensive way to build a custom (but reliable & reasonably low-tolerance ) CNC rig.
I found the open source project page that documents exactly what Makerslide rails are about better than Inventables.com does:
http://www.makerslide.com/
No idea, never used it and its really too small to be of any use to me right now.
It is never in stock. The rails and delrin v bearings are always sold out. They post restock dates but never have anything in stock. My personal opinion is if something is in demand and sells out all the time, order more.
If you want some, do a pre-order now with Inventables.com (I've ordered extra for a couple of foreseeable projects in case it's awhile before they're available again).
The guy who designed the rails (Bart Dring) got overwhelmed with orders, so has just started working with Inventables.com to make them more available. The MakerSlide rails pre-orders are about to tip over the minimum required 500 pre-orders to get a production run, so this is actually a great time to jump in and get the stuff while the getting is good, because when the slide pre-orders reach the minimum 500 orders, Inventors.com will also be selling the complimentary (e.g. as in 'related', and not 'free') parts... bearings, v-bearings, etc... They have to do this this way because they have to create large bulk orders with other manufacturers to meet other minimums currently.
If you're curious about the history and availability, logistics, goals, and related projects to the MakerSlide, and the work being done by inventor Bart Dring, go to the MakerSlide.com forum, Shapeoko.com site and forum, and buildlog.net forum, as well as the Inventables.com pages related to the projects, and do a little poking around and reading. There's even a forum where the stuff Bart Bring is doing is seeing some updates on an active Google group. Assuming Bart's claim to fame is being an inventor, he might not be the shrewdest businessman or manufacturer in the world in terms of keeping mass orders fulfilled himself. But the slider product and the other open-source CNC inventions (e.g. mill, laser printer, 3d printer...) look great.
Hopefully the interest level in the CNC community will reach some critical mass soon such that they can make it available more constantly. I'm sure they want to, but it's hard ramping up on stuff like this (no pun intended). Partnering up with Inventables.com may also help in that sense. But for the average consumer, who isn't in the biz of manufacturing quantities of CNC machines, like me, but just doing their own DIY custom projects, a little forethought and leaping at the opportunity might be the way to go. (E.g. strike while the iron is hot ... and it's hot right now).
Since my original post, I've joined all the related forums, asked questions, read everything I can about it, and frankly, can't wait to get my MakerSlides. I have two different CNC machine ideas beyond the Shapeoko mechanical (low end kit) I ordered, which have custom requirements, and having messed with my own DIY stuff before, this looks so much more convenient. I bought one custom small CNC machine (driller/mill) on Ebay by some manufacturer a few years ago, with aluminum structure holding the steel rails and the sliders would wedge because the whole unit wouldn't remain straight and true enough, despite how solid it looked. It's because he did a custom rail thing and used lower-end parts and couldn't maintain enough tolerances in sync. I also tried to make a CNC hotwire cutter for foam on my own once, and I know that these slides would have helped prevent all the problems I encountered with those projects.
Last edited by reflectivist; 04-13-2012 at 01:50 PM.
reflectivist
It does not compare to other rail systems, it is very light duty, other manufactures have had this type of rail system for some time, there rail system like this is a much better design than what this is
Mactec54
good for laser sweep
As a distributor for David laser scanners...I think this set up could be good for a laser sweep although it would need to be verticle.
DAVID Laserscanner
[url]http://www.fabbers.ru/[/url]
[url]http://www.david-laserscanner.com.ua/[/url]
