A discrete-time sliding mode control design for a ball-screw driven positioning table is presented. The basic feature of this design is that high speed and high positioning accuracy can be met despite of the fact that the controlled process suffers from friction and mechanical flexibility. Disturbance rejection, in the form of friction compensation and vibration suppression, is the main focus of the paper. Apart from this, the robustness of the proposed controller with respect to model uncertainties is also considered. Experiments on the Y-axis of a Mydata surface mount robot show consistent and robust performance under different load conditions.