Wednesday 30 December 2015

A Check List To Use When Purchasing Heavy Duty Casters

By Edward Jackson


By definition from the dictionary, a caster is a small wheel on a swivel attached under a piece of furniture or heavy object to make it easy to move. For the casters, they are designed for the toughest applications like ship and aerospace building many other heavy applications. Long life durability and strength is one criterion one should put into consideration while buying heavy duty casters.

The caster construction material is primarily responsible for giving its chief properties that are strength and durability. Steel made casters are the ones most preferred when it comes to the heavy duty applications since they can provide required weight carrying capacity, mechanical strength. Therefore, one should look for the caster made from the materials that can service the purpose required.

One should also consider if the caster to buy is a swivel or rigid. Swiveling is the ability for the gear to rotate on its axis over a few degrees to a whole turn. Rigid casters are more likely to be used in the heavy duty applications since they provide much steady movements. The swiveling comes in handy in some applications since they help ease movement in cluttered space for they can make easy turns.

Caster wheel wobbling is an effect caused from rapid side to side movement of the wheel during movement. It usually occurs at specific speeds and each caster wheel has its critical speed to which is starts to wobble. The wobble can also be referred as fluttering another contributing factor to the fluttering is the weight borne by the caster wheels. The heavier the load, the less the fluttering since it helps in stabilizing the wheels.

Caster design improvements are important to making them more effective, efficient and improving on safety. These enhancements can be the toe guards to help protect being run over, steering and braking for better control, track wipes to ease movements and swivel locks to avoid derailing. Without the above improvements, they have been injuries reported after long use due to the vibration, back pains due to poor controls among other effects.

Wheel diameter, size and their tandems affect the effectiveness and efficiency of the caster gear. The bigger the wheel diameter, the easier it gets for it to ride over uneven surfaces with the least effort and vibrations. One can also increase the weight carrying capacity by having tandems that tend to distribute the weight over bigger surface area.

Environmental conditions where a caster will be used also dictate the type of caster to buy. The type must be able to work with maximum efficiency with the least maintenance cost. In high temperatures and moist areas, any caster made of metal prone to rusting cannot be advised. In such areas, aluminum and thermal plastics that can stand high temperatures are more applicable. If there is chemical exposure, inert materials like plastics can be used to avoid casters made of reactive metals.

Also the type of caster wheels are dictated by the type of surface or rail being used. When using rails, tapered casters wheels, v-shaped and u-shaped caster wheels are used. For the flat surfaces, flat caster wheels are employed and they can be padded ob tired. This is usually in a bid to reduce vibrations caused and damage to the surface or floor.




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