What Is a Guide Rail?

Guide rail: A groove or ridge made of metal or other material that can withstand, fix, guide a moving device or equipment and reduce its friction. Longitudinal grooves or ridges on the surface of the guide rail for guiding and fixing machine parts, special equipment, instruments, etc. Guide rails are also known as slide rails, linear guide rails, and linear slide rails. They are used in linear reciprocating applications. They have a higher rated load than linear bearings, and can bear a certain torque. .

The guide device in the mechatronic system generally refers to a guide rail, which is composed of a moving part and a guide part. When various machines are running, the correct movement track of the actuator is guaranteed by the guide rail pair. And the rail pair also affects the movement characteristics of the actuator.

As a guide, the guide rail should have the following

1. Lubrication of guide rails

1) Role of rail lubricant

(1) Make the guide rail work as close to the liquid friction as possible to reduce

The guide rail is usually made by mechanical processing or cold drawing processing, and its supporting strength should generally be 370 ~ 520MPa. According to its transverse cross-sectional shape, there are mainly: T-shaped guide rails, L (or triangular) -shaped guide rails, U-shaped guide rails, O-shaped guide rails, hollow guide rails and the like. Common rail section shapes are shown in the figure.

(1) Installing the guide base

Install a fixed rail channel steel base on the floor of the pit. Its center should coincide with the center line of the car guide rail.

After leveling the channel steel foundation, hit one M16 expansion bolt at each end of the channel steel to connect the channel steel to the ground of the pit.

The sliding guide has the advantages of simple structure, convenient manufacturing, and large contact rigidity. However, traditional sliding guides have large frictional resistance, fast wear, large differences in dynamic and static friction factors, and creep at low speeds. In order to improve the positioning accuracy and motion stability of CNC machine tools, CNC machine tools have widely used plastic guide rails on CNC machine tools. The friction factor is small; the dynamic and static friction factors are similar; the motion is stable; it can prevent low-speed crawling; the abrasion resistance is good; it has self-lubrication and vibration resistance; the chemical stability is good; the process is simple and the cost is low.

Generally speaking, the most prominent features of sliding plastic guides are their excellent rigidity, vibration absorption (suppression of vibration generated during cutting of the tool) and damping (prevention of vibration when the guide system starts or stops), which is suitable for machine tools with large cutting loads. , And the cost is low, economical and practical.