Re: Vertical Tracks for Forklift
 

We used a 2" diameter ABS 3D printed winch spool for our catapult launcher last year. It took about 50 pounds to retract our launcher. We had a round bore with a keyway on our first iteration because we didn't have a hex shaft on the winch. As I suspected it cracked around the keyway so we switched to a hex bore and shaft and it held up fine through a month of practice shooting and competition. Here's our spool on GrabCAD.

We're printing our elevator spool this year and we added grooves to guide the line wraps. We use 7/64" Dyneema rope. We're also printing a spool for a constant force spring that counterbalances the elevator. I have seen that mentioned in this thread. I recommend adding one to your elevator/forklift. You can get six free from Vulcan Spring.

Regarding the original topic, we're using VersaFrame 1x2 and 1x1 this year. We used 6063 1x2x1/8 vertical rails in 2013 with no issues.