[pfreivald]

In Overdrive we used Bosch (similar to 80/20) and steel cable, and it worked very well (except that the cable would get tangled if something caused the lift to move too quickly, or bumped it upward -- which happened a few times).

Last year for our lift we used Bosch again, only this time we used a 3' four-start screw drive (direct-driven with a CIM, with a shaft coupler and thrust bearing from McMaster) along with aluminum carriages equipped with delrin sliders. This worked *extremely* well for us.

Indeed, it worked so terrifically well that I think that we'd have to have a very compelling reason not to use a similar setup again if required to do any heavy lifting over any real linear distance.