Originally Posted by
Evodyne
Oracle_9,
Poke about the sight and look at some of the machines using belt drives. Essentially a long toothed belt is fixed to the table at both ends. Your servo (usually with reduction) or stepper is mounted to the moving axis and turns a toothed gear. Guide pulleys ensure that the belt wraps around this drive pulley. Once the belt is pulled taut there is no freeplay. It's basically another play on the rack and pinion. Looks like it could be very cost effective too.
Good luck!
Evodyne
A machine using the belt setup Evodyne is talking about is here: New Machine Build.... The person building the machine has posted a couple videos on YouTube
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QgnD-bgd_4]CNC machine belt drive axis test[/ame]
This one shows the belts real well
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGwZiFQFnvo]CNC machine belt drive all axis test 2[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn-9DeWCQW4]CNC Machine sketch test July 4th[/ame]
P.S. Hey look at that, the forum automatically linked to the actual videos, cool!