Quote Originally Posted by threedee View Post
They cant be that custom. it would be extremely expensive to get something like this done in small quantities.

I've done chalk rub on the end, but prefer to have exact hole placements for i will need to cad and laser/plasma cut steel endcaps that tie both rails together.
Well, I've dealt with many profile suppliers and I've yet to see anything like these offered for sale. Machinery manufacturers will often have Custom profiles made up and these look very much like they have come off some kind of woodworking machine or machine that uses sliding material holders or positioners etc like Biesse etc.

Regards the CAD side of things then I use Solidworks and with something like this I would take a picture, load it into software and scale it. Then I could just trace around the profile.
Then it's just a case of dimensioning it from the part it's self. Then I print it to check fit and adjust as required. 10mins work.

Most better cam packages will allow this kind of thing. Some CAD?CAM softwares like Vectric will actually rough trace it for you, but I often find it needs more work to clean up than it takes to trace around it in a sketch and dimension.