Conduit Wear/Tension Problems

My machine continues to exist in what I’d call a “temporary” installation right now. The table is non-ideal, and I’m thinking of adjusting the size a bit, so a full rebuild is in my future.

That said, I was wondering if the wear I’m seeing on my conduit is normal. The picture below was taken a few minutes ago. I’ve been printing replacement parts on this machine. This is probably not a great idea, as a non-ideal machine is likely to produce non-ideal parts, but I wanted to get used to the operation and this seemed a good way to do it. With about half of the pieces printed, that means probably on the order of 50 hours of usage has produced these flat spots. There have been some filings on the surface around these, as you might expect.

Yup, Most of that is just the zinc coating coming off.

Okay, cool. I was hoping it was okay. First because it was happening on parts of the device that I was reasonably sure I hadn’t screwed up. (There are precious few of those). Second, because the parts of the rail that experienced the wear roll silky smooth in comparison to the rest, and thus it seemed more like wear-in as opposed to wear out.

If the zinc is grinding off, should I be thinking about oil or other corrosion preventatives/lubricants?

No, it’s from pressure not friction.