27 December 2015

Factors To Consider When Looking For Heavy Duty Casters

By Edward Jackson


Functionality combined with strength and durability is essential for heavy duty manufacturing industries. Therefore, heavy duty casters must be able to offer service without failure or breaking. They should be made to meet specific applications needs. They have found their applications in the office furniture, carts, hospital bed, cranes and many other industrial applications.

Material used in the construction dictate the properties of the caster itself. If the strong and durable materials are used, a caster that has been engineered well would bare similar strength and durability. Therefore, it is important to get the casters made by the strongest and durable materials since they tend to offer the same when working with.

A caster can be either rigid, swivel or semi-rigid. Rigid casters incorporate a wheel mounted on a fork and the orientation of work or direction is fixed. The swivel casters have an added joint on the fork to enable them to rotate about the attachment in 360 degrees. Rigid caster machines are used in the heavy duty application to move objects since they are stable and easy to keep in control unlike the swivel ones that can be hard to control.

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.

Ergonomic casters are custom designed to suit the environment and situation they are working in. Long time to exposure to resisting caster gear can cause straining injuries to the operators. Therefore, it is important for design improvement and enhancement to help reduce such injuries to the workers. Such improvements include addition of brakes and steering to help in controls, putting toe guards to avoid the caster from running over peoples feet.

The caster wheels come in different sizes in diameters, width and tandems. These factors play a big role in movement. A large diameter wheel caster is usually preferred on rough and irregular surfaces and vice-versa but a smaller diameter caster has more stability compared to a bigger one. Wide caster machines have ability to carrying bigger weights since they distribute the load over a large surface area. A tandem is the arrangement if a caster in a more compact and regular combinations enables them to carry more weight much comfortably without any breakdowns.

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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