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box guideway or liner guide,Which is better for machine

We often hear that CNC machining centers are divided into box guideway and liner guide so when choosing a machining center, we will ask: Is box guideway better or liner guide better? What is the difference between the two?

What is a box guideway? What is a liner guide

box guideway refers to a cast part where the guide rail and bed are integrated, and then the guide rail is machined on the basis of the casting. The shape of the guide rail is cast on the bed, and then processed into a guide rail through quenching and grinding. There are also guides that are not necessarily integrated with the bed and guide rail, such as embedded steel guide rails, which are nailed to the bed after processing.

liner guide usually refer to rolling guides, which are commonly used in linear modules in the machine tool industry today. These types of components are commonly referred to as "linear guides". The linear guide rail itself is divided into two parts: the slide rail and the slider. The slider has internally circulating balls or rollers, and the length of the slide rail can be customized. It is a modular component that is a standardized series of individual products produced by specialized manufacturers. It can be installed on machine tools and can be disassembled and replaced after wear and tear. Many machine tools in the field of precision machining mostly use high-precision wire tracks as machine tool guides, which greatly ensures the machining accuracy of the machine tools. Imported ones include Germany's Rexroth and Japan's THK, while domestically produced ones include Nanjing Craft, Hanjiang Wire Track, and Taiwan's Shangyin.

Is a machining center made of box guideway good? Is the liner guide better?

box guideway refers to a cast part where the guide rail and bed are integrated. In fact, there is no such thing as good or bad between box guideway and wire rail on the basis of the casting. It can only be said that they are suitable or not, because their emphasis is different. Let's take a look at their respective strengths and weaknesses.

1. Advantages, disadvantages, and applications of box guideway

The box guideway has a large sliding contact surface, good rigidity, strong seismic resistance, and strong load-bearing capacity, making it suitable for heavy load cutting.

box guideway belong to dry friction, and due to the large contact surface, the frictional resistance is also high, so the moving speed cannot be too fast. At the same time, crawling phenomenon is prone to occur, and gaps on moving surfaces can lead to machining errors. The maintenance of machine tool tracks is of utmost importance. Once the track lubrication is insufficient, it can cause the track to burn or wear out, which is fatal to the accuracy of the machine tool.

The application of box guideway is suitable for heavy cutting, large molds, high hardness workpieces, and workpieces with general precision requirements.

2. Advantages, disadvantages, and applications of liner guide

Nowadays, many machine tools operate at extremely fast speeds, especially in terms of idle speed, which is largely due to the reliance on linear tracks. The pre tensioning treatment of the track can achieve zero gap between tracks with high accuracy. In terms of service life, wire rails are significantly longer than hard rails.

Compared to box guideway, liner guide bear less cutting force. However, for hard rails, many machine tool wire rails have greatly improved their load-bearing capacity.

The application of liner guide is suitable for high-speed machines, capable of high-speed cutting, and suitable for processing products and small precision molds. Nowadays, more precision machining centers use liner guide.