Playing with Evaluating a recently arrived MakerBeam Starter Kit revealed swarf snarls in the tapped end holes. After giving up on a needle-nose tweezer, a compressed air blow gun expelled the mess from a handful of short beams:
A scrap of acoustic foam backstopped the rest of the assortment:
Which doesn’t account for the scattering of swarf and oil blown elsewhere in the Basement Shop.
Perhaps a bad day in the MakerBeam factory?
Protip: wear eye protection when using compressed air!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
I bought some a while back as stock and have yet to use any. My thought was that it might not be successful but that I might have enough to do what I needed for most small projects. Still think 8020, Bosch, etc. are missing an opportunity to be making this themselves as another product offering. “Infinity adjustable” channels are way better for prototyping in general but potentially good for an end product. Far easier than custom machined bar stock.
The 10 mm beam seems strong enough for my simple needs and is small enough for desktop projects. I’ve been re-tinkering the microscope stage positioner as a way to learn how to work with the beam’s strengths; a bunch of their brackets & flanges don’t make up for a solid beam-to-beam joint.
huh, i thought MakerBeam was thoroughly defunct. Or was that OpenBeam? One can barely keep track.
AFAICT, OpenBeam is defunct, although the MakerBeam folks apparently have some remaining inventory.
I’d prefer to use ordinary M3 nuts, rather than exotic tee-nuts and fancy bolts with square heads, but it is what it is.
I ran across a similar beam product when I got a bit of surplus semiconductor fab gear. That uses both cast and heavy stamped 90 degree brackets. Most of the pieces have found their way into other projects in the shop. No brands on the beams, and I don’t recall anything on the brackets. The speedy-Tbolts made assembly quick, but they need to be used with caution if there’s some vibration.
Handy stuff to have around.
Bigger beams make more sense for “real” projects, but the last time I looked at them, laying in a useful stockpile was staggeringly expensive. These little beams are (relatively)
inexpensive, although some of the machined fittings are spendy, and the starter kit seemed to have most of what I’d need for at least few projects. Now, to start turning screws …