pic: Omnitrack Summer Project?

[Andy Baker]

There are some good points brought up here.

Riveting the two pieces together is not good.

Custom extrusions are expensive... however, there are MANY types of extrusions out there these days. This profile looks like something similar to what I see every morning when I open my shower door. Also, Paletti has an extrusion that is somewhat similar, SP106, but the roller size would need to change (and that would be a tragedy, I must say!). My advice regarding extrusions would be to keep looking. Someone may have a standard profile that may work for you.

Greg brought up a good point regarding how to drive this thing, and this point may re-define how your rollers are mounted. This would make your extrusion profile different, possibly.

I suggest starting the design with standard attachment chain and build up from there. If you can design a roller frame that can mount between attachment chain flanges, maybe one on each side of the chain, then you would have a double-wide omni track. If you can get this design to be based on a 35 pitch attachment chain, then you can use standard sprockets and drive transmission components.

Good luck, and please keep us posted of your results.

Andy B.