Re: Linear slides (and a rant on extrusions)

McMaster Carr.

they sell the components right out of the catalogue.

and if you want to go the distributor route,
don't be impolite and ask how much. They need
their 40% mark-up so they can drive the company
car to have lunch on their expense account.

When you see that they sell a hunk of steel for
$$$$$$$ and an extrusion for $$$$$ and put them
together for you and charge $$$$$$$ you know why
we are looking for those extrusions.

while on my rant, I paid $1,200 for the die for my
extrusions, then like $1.20 per pound for the aluminum.

The problem with the recent discussion on extrusions is
that I want 1/2 inch someone else 3/4 1" or 1.5 inch
for the bearings, then ditto for the base rail.
that's 8 dies at the $600 each figure (1,200 from my guy)

on a seperate note here, if you make a die and do your
job, and don't use it again for 2-3 years depending on
the house, they take possesion of if and will use it
as a non-propriety die. what this means is that
if we look around we could probably find a die
that is 'free' just buy the extrusions.

if we could get a lot price on drilled ground rod
of say, 1,000 feet and all agree on using 10 feet
then the one bearing, one rail set (base and bearing)
would cost close to $4,000 for a single run.
if 100 of us got 10 feet, it would cost us $40.00
for un-finished lengths.
by the time you're done machining, in house,
you would be close to $100, plus the bar and liner.

if we could get one guy to machine the rails
and bearings, we could go into business and get our
stuff cheap, pay shop rate for the guy doing the
machining and still pay a profit or dividends.

Simple business model, down our (at least some of our's)
alley.

maybe I'm a day late and a dollar short on this one.
but if someone does this, capitalism says that you
don't leae any money on the table. so if you currently
buy a set for $200 and someone makes it for $100
they will most likly sell it for $180. we don't get any
real benefit and the market isn't rocked.

Dave

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@y..., "John H." <johnhe-uk@s...> wrote:
> Oky Doky, I'm now giving up my search on the Holey Grail of sites
that lists
> prices and not just model numbers.
> I'm looking for a very, very, rough idea of how much a 1000 -
1200mm linear
> slide would be to carry anything over 5 - 15kilos. Infact, has
anyone seen a
> site selling linear rails, slides, bearings etc with prices on it?
Or is
> this a "If you've got to ask you can't afford it" thing. [John gets
his
> oxygen mask ready for the replies]
>
> John H.