[M4 Sherman]

Originally Posted by lukevanoort

Assuming you mean drawer slides, I couldn't disagree more. Last year, my team used heavy-duty ball bearing drawer slides that we got at a local hardware store (you can get similar off of McMaster-Carr; but Home Depot, Lowes, etc. don't carry them) and it worked beautifully. The friction was very low and we never had any binding problems. 217 and 229 used server rack slides in 2005, and that also worked very well (where we got the idea, actually). I think 111 may have used something similar in 2005 as well (their linear bearings look very similar anyway, just much larger). I imagine that if you used bad drawer slides (like those from Home Depot) that they might not work well; however, with some decent slides they work great! If I was building a elevator this year, I would either make it like the how Poofs/RAWC did last year, or with drawer slides. Those 80/20 sliders, while quite usable, IMHO, just don't compare to the smoothness and low-friction of running on ball bearings.

Yeah, We used got some heavy duty drawer sliders from Lowes. I think the specs on them were 4 ft. at 50-75 lbs.. All the little plastic pieces broke and the sliders started derailing. But Im sure the McMaster-Carr ones are more durable sliders.