We are an FTC team, but we can help too! Our linear slide is of a similar design, it uses slide blocks connected together, with a pulley on the top and bottom of each block, and a spool with webbing to lift it and use gravity and oil to lower it, but if you had pulleys and another spool it would work just the same (only better, but we only get 8 motors
) We use webbing around the pulleys and spool to lift it, and we have killed motors before we have killed the webbing, so something like
this webbing here would probably work well!