Telescopic Rail Reduces Engineering and Assembly Effort for Tool Cart Maker

To move a cantilevered load, only the strongest slides will do. Not only must they support the load, but the motion must also be smooth and precise. These can be difficult criteria to meet for bearings used in carts that contain web handling equipment. A single drawer holds hundreds of pounds of gear and will overhang when open. Supporting a heavy, cantilevered load requires an exceptional bearing.

Balancing Long Travel and Heavy Load Requirements

Recently, Mechatronic Solutions, a manufacturer of automation technology equipment, designed a heavy-duty tool cart for an equipment maker that wanted to offer the cart as an option to customers who purchase its machines. The tool cart’s drawers were intended to hold steel rotary dies for cutting products, creating two challenges. First, the drawers had to support up to 600 pounds or more of hardware, and they had to be able to open fully. 

According to the sales engineer, the designers could not produce a simple design to meet the long travel requirement and support the heavy load. Early designs called for steel square rail-type guides, as well as various other slides, but they all fell short of meeting both requirements. The engineers, having used Rollon products for close to five years, gave our application specialists a call and discussed the project’s requirements.

Mechatronic Solutions chose our Telescopic Rail for the job. These full-extension guides are made from high-strength carbon steel and provide good stiffness with little deflection, making them well-suited to support heavy loads. In fact, one Telescopic Rail can support more than 8,000 pounds per pair of guides. A pair of DSS-43-690 rails satisfies the tool cart’s 600-pound load requirement. In addition, the Telescopic Rail’s induction hardened raceways provide smooth, consistent movement under high loads—even during 24/7 operation. 

The team at Mechatronic Solutions has been pleased with the results. Thanks to our support and the Telescopic Rail’s easy mounting, the company saved significant engineering and assembly time and effort. According to Tony Ruberto, sales engineer at Mechatronics Solutions, “The slides were very high-quality and robust. Even with heavy loads, they traveled very smoothly.” 

So how does the customer like the tool cart? “They love them,” Ruberto says. “They ordered many more from us.”

There’s a Telescopic Rail to Suit Your Heavy-Duty Application

The Telescopic Rail is available with partial, full and 150-percent telescopic strokes in various sizes and intermediate elements. If standard guides don’t quite meet your application’s needs, our engineering staff can work with you to design a custom guide. When you need a high-strength telescoping guide with smooth, quiet motion, our Telescopic Rail can be an ideal solution. 

For more information about our Telescopic Rail