There are many types of guide rails, and different types of guide rails have different ranges of use. Do you want to know what type of guide rail is suitable?

The commonly used guide rail forms for machine tools are sliding guide rails, static pressure guide rails, and rolling guide rails. In this regard, users often ask the following question when purchasing machine tools: What is the best guide rail form for machine tools? Nowadays, most users do not pay attention to the accuracy, performance, and characteristics of the machined parts when writing machine tool bidding documents. They simply stipulate in the bidding documents that the bidding machine tool must use linear rolling guide rails and indicate the use of German or Japanese production line rails, and even name a certain manufacturer's product. Machine tool dealers are also exaggerating the advantages of linear guides and misleading users in their selection. What form of guide rail is good? We should compare them in all aspects.

The characteristics and economy of sliding guide rails, static pressure guide rails, and rolling guide rails have a significant impact on the stiffness, machining accuracy, and service life of machine tools. As an important part of the machine tool feed system, different types of machine tools have different requirements for guide rails. The guide rails of CNC machine tools have higher requirements than those of ordinary machine tools. And we hope that there will be no vibration during high-speed feeding, no crawling during low-speed feeding, and high sensitivity. Good wear resistance, long-term continuous operation under heavy loads, and good accuracy retention are issues that machine tool manufacturers must consider when designing machine tools and machine tool users when selecting machine tools. Below are three types of guide rail forms for comparison:

1.1 Sliding guide rails have the longest history of application in machine tools and are widely used in various machine tool products, especially in ordinary machine tools, which are often made of cast iron or embedded steel guide rails. In order to improve the wear resistance and accuracy of the guide rail, surface quenching and grinding are generally carried out on the surface of the guide rail. Modern machine tools, especially CNC machine tools, commonly use plastic sliding guides.

Plastic sliding guide rails have low friction coefficient, small difference between dynamic and static friction coefficients, good vibration reduction, good damping, wear resistance, and self-lubricating effect. Plastic sliding guide rails have cast iron surface quenching - plastic sliding guide rails and embedded steel - plastic guide rails. Plastic sliding guide rails are commonly used on the motion guide rails of guide rail pairs, and the corresponding metal guide rails are made of cast iron or steel materials. Plastic guide rails are divided into injection molded guide rails and adhesive guide rails. The plastic on the guide rails is commonly coated with epoxy resin wear-resistant coatings and polytetrafluoroethylene guide rail soft tapes.

Injection molded guide rail. The material for injection molding or wear-resistant coating of guide rails is a two-component plastic composed of epoxy resin and molybdenum disulfide as the matrix, with plasticizers added and mixed into a paste as one component and a curing agent as the other component. This coating has strong adhesion and good processability, and can be processed by turning, milling, planing, drilling, grinding, and scraping. It also has good friction and wear resistance, and its compressive strength is higher than that of polytetrafluoroethylene guide soft tape. When cured, the volume does not shrink and the size is stable. Especially after adjusting the relative positional accuracy between the fixed guide rail and the motion guide rail, paint can be injected. It can save a lot of processing time, especially suitable for heavy-duty machine tools and complex mating surfaces that cannot use guide rails and soft belts.

Plastic coated guide rails. Stick a layer of wear-resistant plastic soft tape on the sliding surface of the guide rail, and the matching sliding surface of the guide rail is quenched and ground. The soft tape is made of polytetrafluoroethylene as the substrate, with the addition of alloy powder and oxide. The plastic soft tape can be cut into any size and shape, and attached to the guide rail surface with adhesive. Due to the adhesive method used for this type of guide rail, it is called a plastic adhesive guide rail.