I was looking at a source book of mechanisms and ran across a description of a linkage that was patented in recent decades for producing motion in a straight line. Such devices are quite old, and apparently none of them is perfect, but the particular device was described as being so accurate that the error was too small to measure. Moreover, it is claimed that it can carry a weight.
Since "too small to measure" sounds like it is safely within the tolerances usually required of the ways of a lathe, I am wondering whether a device like this could be used as an alternative to having to scrape the ways of a lathe. Instead of using scraped ways, one could use this kind of linkage to move the carriage ways towards the head stock. Undoubtedly one has to worry about vibrations and maybe one would not be able to make it out of angle iron, but the question is whether there is any way to make this approach work.
Ignorantly, Allan Adler snipped-for-privacy@zurich.ai.mit.edu
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