Hi I am trying to raise a basket using the slider pieces and I find that they bind really really easy. Does anyone have any tips for using them? It seems like if they are off the littlest bit that they stick and refuse to go up any more. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
<3
Jeff
I was very excited about the sliders, and I ordered some. I quickly found the same problems that you found (although, I was trying to slide up at an angle which is worse for friction). We asked if we could use some lubricant for the FVC competition, but the answer was a “NO”. We quickly moved on to other ideas.
If you are looking to create and elevator mechanism, some teams I have seen use the tank treads as a rack and pinion gear. Good luck!
Some teams have managed to use them, but it is definetly quite a challenge. Team 3214 pulled it off beautifully, but it took them a long long time. They told me they used optical shaft encoders and quite a bit of code to perfectly sync two different motors to lift their cage on opposite sides with linear slides.
It depends on the design, but gear the two motors for the slides together, or send a shaft across if possible. If you tandem (do not know if thats the right word; hook the two motors together) the two motors together and distribute the power to both sliders, I would suspect there wouldnt be that problem.
We built a very rigid lift with the sliders and only had it pull on one side. Worked fine, just had to sand the slides smooth. Here’s a picture of our lift.
http://inlinethumb12.webshots.com/3723/2121014100099908742S600x600Q85.jpg
Yes that will be our robot competing at Atlanta. Minus the tracks, as we went with the small wheels as they get better traction and increase its speed.
The slider is the highest part. The front, away from the camera, slides. The rear, which has the winch as a part of it and 3 softballs in does not move. It basically is one long conveyor belt system for the softballs.
could you post pictures of your winch system and how it is attached?
im sure Jeff can explain more if i dont hit it, but the winch is on the most right o the picture. Judging from what i have seen and from the picture, the L bracket is used and the motor overhangs the top so the gear on the winch will be in the middle of the bracket… Motors on both sides of the winc, or maybe just one, cant tell from the picture and cant remember, but i think it may only be one. Those two gears i think are to keep the string in place. If any other questions, im sure jeff can answer, but i think i covered what i think you wanted. Anyways, 599 is my teams robot, so i couldnt tell you full indepth about Chaminade’s. They have a very interesting design to scoring. Anyways, i got to get some sleep, my team is coming over tomorrow to discuss stuff before atlanta, im secondary coach, so i need to be rested to give my team good spirit and hope. 
Oh, I think devil duckies used sliders on one of their robots in SD, if i remember right, they too said they need to be straight, because they had problems sticking if they were not positioned correctly. So make sure the two are parrallel, and not off. I could be mistaken though, but I sort of remember that little quick note when setting up their fields in SD.
Thanks for your help. I want to make little robot babies with everyone!!!
I’ll pass on the baby-making 
But, about sliders…
if you don’t need the entire length of both slider pieces you can cut one to shorten it. This cuts down on friction, but probably does increase the chance that if the inner and outer pieces are rigidly attached to the rest of the bot, that a twisting moment might cause them to bind.
My most notable use of the sliders occured when they were part of an arm that slid through a pivot so neither sliding piece was 100% rigidly attached to the rest of the bot.
I guess I don’t see why the sliders have to be so dang tricky! Cant it just be easy? -tear-
life isnt supposed to be easy 
FVC Team 40 used the sliders and two things help alot 1st let everything you can float to keep things from binding. Next is to debur the sliders if they have little jaggies on them. You want all the metal to be smooth as possible. They are stamped so its hard to get a perfect finish.
Well as an example of how difficult the sliders are to use, we witnessed 2 different teams using WD40 on sliders at the competition. In each case, the team claimed to be unaware that it was not competition legal (one team was convincing while the other was not). In any event, they should allow them to be lubricated since sliders would normally be lubricated anyway.