Wednesday, 30 December 2015

Guides To Follow While Buying 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.

When buying a caster, one should consider whether to get a swiveling or rigid one. Each has its merit and demerits. Rigid caster machines are more like to carry more weight since they do not have many joint and are safer in controlling them. The swiveling casters are more applicable in areas wheel there need to be lots of movements since they can turn at one place without taking much of a space.

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.

The conditions of a caster use also comes into consideration since certain materials are with qualities might be not right for the particular environment. A good example is the steel tandems that might be affected by extreme moisture affecting their durability and performance. For the plastic based casters, the temperatures might render them inefficient thus one needs to consider the conditions of working before purchasing the casters.

Lastly, when purchasing the caster, one should understand his or her requirements based on the type if surface or rail he is going to use. Flat surfaces call for flat padded or tired casters so as to reduce vibration and floor damage. For the rails, u- shaped, v-shaped and tapered are more preferred since they provide grip on the rail thus avoiding derailing.




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