[unbwogable]

I was taking apart an old inket printer for parts, and found that the ink carriage rides on the steel rod, cusioned ONLY by two brass rings. I gutted all of the peices, and did a test (positioning the brass rings on the steel, and sliding them slowly back and forth, with increasing weight on the rings themselves), and it took very little effort to move them, even with 15 pounds hanging down from them, and my router only weighs about 8 pounds.

My question is this:

Is this an acceptable format for a slide (precision milled round steel rod with precision brass slides)? What wear-rate could I expect?

[Zumba]

It's probably bronze, not brass. There are a couple grades of bronze available for use as bearing material, notably an oil-impregnated sintered type.

The problem with bronze (or any other plain linear bearing/bushing) is that they're susceptible to binding. The reason why they weren't binding in your tests was because the rods were flexing.

[unbwogable]

So, then, I'm guessing that my best bet would be to stick with the more expensive, but more reliable, roller bearings?