I came across this stuff called Makerslide the other day whilst looking at the newest things on Thingiverse.
The inventor, Barton Dring, had posted an alternative 3D printer design that he was calling the Quantum ORD Bot, that he had thrown together in a couple of hours using his Makerslide product.
The total cost for all of the parts, including motors, would be less than some people are charging for a printed set of parts to build your own Prusa Mendel.
Now there are a couple of other products on the market that achieve the same sort of end goal, of V bearings running against Aluminium extrusion, but none even vaguely close to the price point that he is selling at in the Makerslide store.
This product started out as a Kickstarter funded project and has huge potential in the home CNC market.
One company that has already started using this product for a CNC machine is Shapeoko, another Kickstarter funded project that aims to develop a complete CNC machine for $300.00, initial design shown below:
The latest design makes use of the Makerslide product, and is now pretty much complete and ready to start shipping.
I have started modelling the items available from the Makerslide store in Google Sketchup, I recreated some of the items, as I did not like the quality of the ones available at Google Sketchup 3D Warehouse, they looked a bit messy around the edges, and some had totally the wrong dimensions.
Let’s see what I can design with these products. Shipping will be an issue for any actual extrusion, the rest of the items are pretty small and light, bearings I can source locally if required.