Why can't most linear guides be used in environments with a lot of dust and debris, while dual axis guides can be used? Let's understand why dual axis linear guides can prevent dust.

The steel ball of the linear guide rail has a deadly killer - dust. Once dust enters the slider, it will cause the steel balls to jam. For this reason, most of the brand's sliders use sealed end caps and sealed negative plates to prevent dust and debris from entering the slider chamber and oil leakage.

In order to further enhance the dust prevention effect and prevent dust and debris from accumulating on the surface of the guide rail, the protective cover can be used to seal the entire linear guide rail, which can play a good role in the workshop environment. There is less dust, but in environments with more dust, its defects will be exposed, such as in the environment of CNC woodworking lathes.

Due to a large amount of dust and small particles, it can be said that there are no pores in it. After prolonged use, dust will still enter the slider and become solid when mixed with lubricating grease, which prevents the steel balls from rolling properly on the raceway and prevents the slider from sliding properly on the guide rail. As a result, under high resistance, the drive motor is overloaded, resulting in machining pattern errors and malfunctions. Meet design requirements.

Meanwhile, in the application of long-distance automatic loading and unloading, dust becomes more severe due to the following application characteristics:

1： Long journeys, such as 5m, will result in the inability to install and use protective covers.

Secondly, automatic loading and unloading typically requires faster line speeds, and the use of protective covers can limit the increase in line speeds.

3： The journey is very long. When assembling linear guides, dust and debris are prone to accumulate at the joints and are not easily scraped off by the sealed end caps and negative plates; When the slider passes through the joint, these dust and debris will enter the interior of the slider.

It can be seen that ball linear guides are not suitable for use in high dust environments. Why use dual axis linear guides?

There are two main reasons why linear guides can be used in high dust environments:

1. A drum with a special structure. The rolling element of the roller - the steel ball or tapered roller in the bearing does not directly contact the guide rail, thereby preventing pollutants on the guide rail from contacting the rolling element. At the same time, bearings have good sealing performance, which can prevent pollutants from the air from entering and contacting the rolling elements.

2. Drum self-cleaning function. The contact between the roller and the steel shaft of the guide rail belongs to line contact. The line of the roller intersects diagonally with the central axis and rotates at high speed around the central axis. The contact between the line and the roller belongs to instantaneous contact, which approaches the surface of the guide rail at high speed and then leaves at high speed. In this way, the surface of the guide rail can be kept clean through the "lines" of the rollers.

A linear guide with bearings achieves linear motion by rolling rollers on the steel shaft of the guide. Therefore, dust prevention construction is more complex, so this method should be well learned.

The above is a detailed introduction about "How to do the dust work on linear guides?"