LIMNMEDIA - Setting the rails

At first glance, it’s a straightforward connection, but this step is doing something much more important:

It is defining the distance and alignment between the rails.

Each cross brace was installed using through holes, but getting everything to fit correctly required small adjustments. The holes in the cross bars were carefully opened up and tuned to allow for slight positional changes.

With the linear rails in place and the thicker aluminum plate (the carriage) resting on the bearings, I was able to check for tight spots at each cross brace location.

The process became:

• install a cross brace

• place the rails and carriage

• check for binding or resistance

• remove and adjust

• repeat

This kind of iterative fitting is slow, but necessary. Small misalignments at each brace add up across the length of the track.

Doing this by hand makes it difficult to get each cross brace exactly the same, but the goal here is not perfect uniformity—it’s functional alignment across the system.

This is where the build starts to demand more attention to tolerance and consistency. The rails don’t just need to be parallel—they need to behave as a system.

---

— Christopher

LIMNMEDIA