ROLLON Corporation's Compact Rail linear bearings are totally different from all the other linear bearing systems available in the marketplace. Most linear bearings are descendents of heavy machine tool bearings and therefore, by their very nature nature, tend to be slow, recirculating-ball carriages mounted on simple round or profiled shafts. In designing the Compact Rail, ROLLON started from scratch and designed a linear bearing system based on the needs of modern design engineers.

ROLLON's Compact Rail is a simple, precision, linear bearing system that is easy and inexpensive to mount to all - even non-machined- surfaces. In addition, Compact Rail will self-align to another rail even if mounting surfaces are not perfectly parallel.

For example, consider a linear application with the following characteristics: - Two linear bearing rails and four bearing sliders. - The rails are 2 m (2000 mm)long and 1 m (1000 mm) apart. - The rails mounted to a welded steel or aluminum profiled structure.

How does the machine builder ensure that the linear bearings are exactly 4ft apart across the 2-meter length?

How does the machine builder ensure that both rails are mounted at the same height over the 2-meter?

Can the builder of this machine ensure the parallelism of these linear bearings on all axes?

Sure, but at what cost? How costly is it to machine two 2-meter mounting surfaces? Can the builder pass these machining costs on to his customer?

Compact Rail self aligning linear bearings would allow the rails to be 4mm off over the 2-meters. They could start at 1 m apart and finish at 1 m +4 mm (1004mm). That is a HUGE difference.

Compact Rail self aligning linear bearings could also be mounted with a 25mm(1") height difference without adding preload or having play.

Compact Rails could do all of this without adding additional preload to the system and without having any play. It would do all of this and still offer 0.003" (3 microns)linear precision.

Is it realistic to assume that his machine builder would have the large errors (4 mm lateral and 25 mm height)? Probably not. However, could there be 1 mm lateral difference over 2m? Easily. Could there be 2-5 mm height difference between the rails? Easily.

Would this effect the lifetime on normal recirculating ball bearing sliders and profile shafts? Absolutely. Would they bind? Most likely?

With Compact rail you can mount the bearings and go. No Machining needed.

OTHER ADVANTAGES:

Compact design ROLLON's unique design places the raceways on the inside of the rails where they are protected from bumps or shocks. The sliders, which are protected from debris and impurities with their incorporated spring-loaded wipers run inside of the rails. COMPACT RAIL linear bearings fit into an extremely limited space and offers the best-protected solution available for even the most for critical environments.

Maintenance Free The self-lubricating wipers available for the NT series sliders continually apply a thin layer of lubrication to the system. This constant lubrication assures 2 millions cycles before additional maintenance or substitution is required. The cost savings of this system when compared to other systems are incredible. The kits can also be refilled by using the grease nipples on the heads. This advance in lubrication technology does not add any length to the sliders as it fits into the same dimensions as the standard heads.

High Speed = High Productivity For a wide range of applications and especially in the automation field, the most important bearing feature is often speed, as the speed determines the productivity. Higher working-speed results in higher output. The Compact Rail family of products offers solutions that can be run at nearly 9m/s; an incredibly high speed compared to common systems.

Silent Operation Level With today's restrictive regulations for admissible working noise levels, it's become more and more important to keep a machine's operation noise level as low as possible. The Compact Rail system offers very low operation noise level, even when working with high loads and high speed. This is the opposite of recirculating ball sliders that become much noisier as the speed and load increases.

Quick And Easy Assembling The cost of assembly time is often neglected during the designing stage as many engineers assume that the time for assembly is a fixed factor, equal for all linear bearings. The Compact Rail system has been developed to offer high cost savings on assembly time. In addition, substantial cost savings is also gained due to low requirement of the accuracy of the mounting surface finish.

The self-aligning rail combinations T/U and K/U, the self-aligning rails with C'sunk fixing holes, and the small number of fixing screws due to the large pitch of the rails, all offer the most efficient time saving characteristics.

Optimum Preload Setting For applications where the stiffness or low friction is of critical importance, the Compact Rail system offers the unique possibility of allowing the preload on standard sliders to be set according to the exact needs of the application. All sliders are interchangeable, by just simply resetting the preload.