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| PLA Wheel |
While working on another workspace upgrade project, I decided to try making my own castor wheels from scratch using some leftover bearings that were floating around in the parts bin. I started off from the known dimensions the castors that are on the bottom of my main workbench, about 1.5 inch tall, and the specs of the 625 bearings that I was planning to use.
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| Castor wheel parts version 1 |
A bit of drafting in Fusion 360 ended up with the version 1 parts, they worked fairly well once assembled since I've done rotating parts with 625 bearings before, but they weren't rotating around the vertical pivot like I was expecting them to when turning, so what was going on?
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| Castor wheel mounts version 3 |
I pulled up some example of high-end castor wheels online and quickly found the two issues with my design that were causing the rotation to jam under load. First up is that commercial castors actually have the centre of mass/vertical rotation shaft centred over the outermost 25% of the wheel rim area. This means that the wheel is constantly trying and failing to escape from under the load, manifesting as the sideways force that makes the wheels rotate to the point of least resistance relative to where you're trying to move them.
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| Castor wheel version 3 with bearing collar installed |
The second detail is a simple mechanical part choice to make sure the wheels don't bind or stick under the load they're rated for, a simple ring of ball bearings around the vertical shaft between the wheel bracket and mounting plate. It's sort of a knock-off 'thrust bearing' more than anything else, so I drew some modifications into the parts to create a 3D printable version for testing and light load applications. Current plans are to use these for a small storage cart for around my workshop, so more to come later this summer.
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| Finished castor wheel version 3 |
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