I'm Casey Bartholomew and with me today is Scott Spangler, president of Roland America.

Now in this video we're going to be talking about one of the most popular linear guides that you'll see today and that's the profiled rail guide.

Now Scott, can you give us a little bit of background on how this guide came about and maybe some of the applications that it's generally used in?

Sure, so the profile rail was patented back in 1932.

It wasn't until the 70s and 80s when they were able to make it and mass-produce this product and it was made for the machine tool industry.

Very high accuracy, sub-micron, stiff, high precision type of applications.

Okay, so it started out being designed for machine tools but where do we usually see it today?

Is that still the case or is it kind of proliferated across different automation?

It became very popular and people started using it in other applications and you probably see it when you're doing applications in assembly.

Yeah, all the time.

All the time.

People are using it in applications it really wasn't designed to do because it's not compliant whatsoever.

Right, so I guess nowadays it's being pulled into more lower accuracy applications and it's actually kind of hindering or over-constraining the system as a whole, right?

Right, if you're shoving Snickers bars into a box, you know, you don't need sub-micron level accuracy.

You need something that you can put together in your machine quickly.

You don't have to worry about machining the bases and it needs to be compliant.

This is not compliant.

Right, so now let's talk about something that is compliant and something that's right in the wheelhouse of applications such as those.

Good, let's talk about the compact rail.

Yeah, we got the compact rail right here.

So where's the accuracy cutoff?

Where are you going to move from a high-precision product like profiled rail into a more medium precision compliant product like compact rail?

So positioning accuracy at about 200 microns.

If you need sub 200 microns, stay with the profile rail because it is a more accurate guide.

But this also has ground raceways, so it's a precision guide itself, but typically used in more pick-and-place assembly type applications and those would be over 200 micron level.

Okay, and I'm sure there's cost savings that come along with specking a product that's more compliant and it doesn't require as a precise mounting surface.

Right, you don't need to machine the base plate, you don't need to machine any of the mounting surfaces, you just drill holes and basically bolt it down.

It can misalign up to about four millimeters, and I think this is what this demo shows.

Yeah, and let's take a look at what happens when you introduce misalignment into these two different types of linear guides.

Here on the right we have profiled rail that's been misaligned in both the height directions as well as the parallelism directions.

You can see that this rail on the left has been shimmed off of the base plate four millimeters, and these rails have also been misaligned in parallelism of four millimeters.

So with this type of misalignment you can see that this profile guide is really difficult to move, and that's also going to lead to premature bearing failure, increased wear, and an overall more, I guess, poorer performing system than you're going to get with something like profiled rail.

Here on the left we have our compact rail, which has been same misalignment, four millimeters, so it's been height misaligned and pitch misaligned.

But let's take a look at the difference in the motion that you get from these linear guides.

See, it's nice and smooth.

Nice, smooth, easy, accurate, repeatable.

That's what you're going to get with profiled rail that's been misaligned compared to, that's what you're going to get with compact rail compared to profiled rail when it's misaligned.

So this is a good example to show the benefits of going with a more compliant linear guide versus a more precise but restrictive linear guide when it comes to mounting.

It's all about using the right guide for the right job.

Right.

Yeah, so if you want to learn more about compliant linear guides and what Roland's compact rail could potentially offer your application, head on over to Roland's website, www.roland.com, where you can learn more about our compact rail.

And if you like this video, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe, where you can see more videos like this that'll be coming out in the future.

Thanks for watching.