Advantages of linear guide slides:

1. Smooth and extremely accurate positioning due to low friction
2. Uniform and low coefficient of friction allows the use for smaller drives and motors
3. Seals, wipers and covers help protect slides in hostile environments

Selecting roller and ball design linear guides
Select a ball or roller guide design based on the duty-cycle of the application.

Roller and ball guideway dynamics

Ball		Roller

Under a given load, a steel ball deforms elastically more than a cylindrical roller. Thus, a roller guideway is less susceptible to errors caused by vibration and shock. A ball guideway will travel faster.

For rolling, pitching and yawing moment loads, roller guideways deform less under a given applied load than ball guideways. These graphs also show that higher preloads can be effective in increasing the overall rigidity of ball guideways.

Graphs compare the elastic deformation of roller and ball guideways under three moment loads.

In each case, roller guideways have less deformation per unit load.

Rolling deformation

Pitching deformation

Yawing deformation

Elastic deformation

Damping characteristics
Damping may be described as response (or decay) time for a linear bearing guideway to stabilize following a shock or vibration. Long damping times delay accurate positioning in machine tools. Measurements of damping characteristics show that roller guideways have shorter decay time than ball guideways.

Under an induced shock or moment load, roller guideways react less than ball guideways to applied force, and they stabilize faster.