Improved Lego Z axis. There's still that corkscrew motion; I think that's something wrong with the end of the threaded rod. I will try to file it flat... But overall much happier with the mechanism. Key improvements included moving the sliding part closer to the captive nut, use of the gears to hold the toothed track in place, and putting the flat sliding surface on the side nearest the point at which the force is applied by the captive nut.

I'm hopeful that bolting everything down tightly (it's roughly assembled right now, everything is hand-tight) will make it serviceable. Now moving on to testing the opto-endstops and writing a program to exercise with limit-sensing.