Linear Guide Woes

So I commonly source parts from ebay. It is easy with payments through paypal. I can find anything there and the shipping is usually free and fast. But the linear guides from ebay just aren't cutting it. They are not perfectly smooth. A couple are but most aren't. And at this point I have wasted money buying a bunch of blocks and hoping to find the few more smooth ones I need. I am now trying to source them from here: https://motionconstrained.com/store/...linear-guides/ And I was wondering if anybody here has a better suggestion for where to get linear guides from? I ordered the 2 545mm rails with 2 blocks on each rail and it was $262. That covers Y. I might need to go back and replace the 2 for X and the 4 for Z with higher quality components.

Well I got my name brand HIWIN guides. 2 545mm rails and 4 sliding blocks. mgn12h. And all I can say is wow. They have drag on them. There is preload. but they are so damn smooth. The rails come all oily. and each block is individually seaked in a blister pack and they are also really oily. The rails are etched with HIWIN logo as with the blocks. And they are just so incredible that it hurts me to realize that I now must backup and replace the other Chinese B.S. I have already on my frame for X and Z. This is my first experience with the linear guides and what I have learned is that it pays to spend the money on the name brand high quality parts. HIWIN from Motion Constrained and you will be impressed. From Ebay and may God have mercy on your printer's soul. I wasted a chunk of money learning this lesson.

that is a lot of money !

That is just for Y. I ordered the 2 rails for X last night and I am trying to come to terms with what I need to pony up for Z.. https://i1050.photobucket.com/albums...r%20guides.png

But it is right. It is what I need to do. For what I am trying to do with this machine and what I am trying to build this is the right path to take. And no matter how much it hurts it just slides so smooth and the etched rails and blocks really make things look more high end.. https://i1050.photobucket.com/albums...oWiz/130_3.jpg

I made this short 1 min video in HD showing how incredible these genuine HIWIN guides really are. Right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOUs3byU4dM

Onto the comparison between HIWIN and cheap knockoffs. So here we can see the metal of the rails is a different color indicating they are different metals on some level.. https://i1050.photobucket.com/albums...il%20color.jpg

That is a good thing because I took the cheap rails to my job to show my fellow mechanics I work with just how poorly they slid and left them on my toolbox for just a few days. And look what happened.. https://i1050.photobucket.com/albums...sty%20rail.jpg In this life you get what you pay for. Why would a cheap ass rail use high quality steel for it's bearing surfaces? It is actually nothing more than common sense.

I did it. Tonight I put the last rails on my paypal credit. I did not get 2 blocks per rail as I became afraid that 4 blocks might be too much drag for 1 stepper with all the weight of the gantry. So it was not $500 for Z. The total cost for me to convert my Tevo Black Widow to genuine HIWIN linear guides less the hardware is somewhere between $850 - $900. I have no regrets. I am not stupid and nor am I rich. I just really want a quality product and the cheap stuff is, well, just that. This hurt, it will take time to pay off, and I will not do this to all or any other of my printers. But this is my attempt at reaching as high as I can in the name of FDM print quality. We will see where it gets me.

you do know that now you have to switch from steppers to servo motors :-)
Can't have the solid gold rails sulking because they have to talk to common-as-muck stepper motors.

So, what does you wife get ? ;-) You've just spent nearly a thousand bucks on some sliding rails. You taking her to subway for lunch lol

I recently put my wife in a 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Touring L minivan. It cost a little more than the rails. And it has power sliding doors, a power liftgate, remote start, voice recognition so she can tell her car what temp or station to tune to. It has the rear and side looking radars. Its all leather n junk. She is very happy with that. ….for now.

I am gonna stick with the regular steppers. They are all 0.9 degree or 400 step/rev. motors and I did double up on them so there are 2 for each axis. And I am upgrading my controller to a 32 bit flavor so I can drive these LV8729 drivers at 1/128 microstepping.

well that's alright then :-)