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Originally Posted by Andrew Schuetze
The use of a telescoping or vertical lift system has been avoided by our team since our rookie year back in 2001. We had tried using the tape system with the window motor glide system but we needed a lot of help.
I have been looking at some samples sent to our team from igus and those new parts donated by them to BEST. They look pretty solid and easy to use.
Does anybody have any experience with these types of items? Here is a flash animation from their website that really looks adaptable 
http://www.igus.com/dwflash.asp
This is a page with pictures of the many examples shown in the flash movie.
http://www.igus.com/show_dw.asp
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Most people have the most trouble with these sort of things when they don't understand the accuracy required. The first part of that flash demo shows two round rails connected to a solid piece and the second part shows a couple round rails on separate pieces. I would strongly suggest using a single piece rail because of how tight you need to hold your parallel tolerance - very likely this is in the thousandths of an inch range, depending on the rail system.
I have a personal, relatively unfounded bias toward 80-20 extruded aluminum and their linear bearings in FIRST applications. Though a bit pricey, the linear bearing on the 1" size extrustion has force ratings that are appropriate for FIRST, are pretty forgiving in terms of misalignment and don't require lubrication.
But to answer your question - from a first glance, this looks descent. Check out the force ratings and make sure it'll hold up to what you need. The even more important (IMHO) design question is, how are you going to make that carriage move? I think finding a rail setup is the easier part of a linear system.
Matt