Linear strip mounting

I'm thinking I might finally get around to mounting the US digital
optical encoder strips I bought a while back, and am wondering if anyone
else has done this using a direct drive type of setup as opposed to
Dan Mauch's pushrod system, which I don't have room for.

At the moment I have a piece of 3/4"x1.5"x.125 wall aluminum tubing
I'm planning to slit on a table saw. The idea is to clamp the film
between two strips of aluminum inside that, then make a plastic slider
to hold the HEDS reader module.

There wasn't much room to make the plastic slider, so I cut the
U-shaped +5V and ground linkages between the two sides of the module
so that the slider can go underneath it. I figure I can
restore the connections with some wire-wrap wire when it's all
finished.

The current plan is to slit the bottom of the slider and insert a 1/16
or 3/32 steel plate that would project through a slit in the bottom of
the aluminum tube and bolt onto a bracket hanging off the lathe
carriage.

If I can't make this fit, I'm just going to cut off the bottom of the
tube and live with only an inverted U-channel as a shield. The
strips are cheap, and I need them on the machine so I can get onto other
projects..

Any thoughts on this?

Chris

--
Christopher C. Stratton, stratton@...
Instrument Maker, Horn Player & Engineer
22 Adrian Street, Somerville, MA 02143
http://www.mdc.net/~stratton
NEW PHONE NUMBER: (617) 628-1062 home, 253-2606 MIT