For our upcoming production of The Understudy at Purdue, we need to create a short (i.e., total height about 5") pallet/wagon to push a table and chairs on stage with. We want to use our stock 2 1/2"-tall triskit panels to save both time and money; unfortunately, this makes using our 4"-tall stock casters impossible to use. What to do?
Rosebrand sells a product they call the "Pallet Master Caster," essentially a wide, short wheel in a low-profile mounting plate. However, these sell for $22 a piece, more than I can afford to spend on casters for this unit. So I spent some time digging around the shop, to see what we might do instead, and found enough material that we'll be able to make our own shop-built pallet casters for free, and I thought I'd share how.
Full disclaimer: we have some materials left over from previous projects that other people may not have kicking around their shops; we also have some equipment that makes this project easy to complete that others may not have access to.
The key to this project is a number of lengths of 1 1/2" diameter Delrin rollers we purchased as wire-rope keepers for winch-drum frames. We didn't end up using them for that purpose, so they've literally been hanging out in the shop waiting for something to do. Delrin is an acetal plastic that has high impact resistance, structural strength, stiffness, and stability. The rollers we have are all a couple of feet long, with an (I believe) ABS plastic bushing core, and a 1/2" diameter center bore. A 3-inch-long length of roller makes a nice, small profile, pallet caster wheel.
We also have scrap lengths of 1/2" diameter mild steel rod hanging around the shop, left over from previous projects. These make a perfect shaft for the roller wheels to ride on. Finally, also kicking around the shop were a couple of scrap lengths of 1/4" thick, 3" wide mild steel plate. Ideally, I'd want the plate of the caster to be more like 3/16" thick, but beggars can't be choosers, right?
Three components: a wheel, a shaft, and a mounting plate. That's all it takes to make these pallet casters. That, and some time: we estimate that in a total of about 12 person-hours of labor, we can have six of these made, based on our prototype.
Ideally, we'd use a CNC milling station to prepare the mounting plate from the flat-steel stock: we need to remove a 3 1/4" by 1 3/4" square out of the center of the plate for the wheel to ride in, tap two holes on either side for securing the center shaft, and open four mounting holes (or slots) in the corners. We don't have a milling station--either CNC or manual--unfortunately. Instead, for our prototype we used our Scotchman ironworker, a hydraulic press for stamping steel up to 1/4" thick (conveniently the size of our plate). We used a 3/4" square die to to remove the material in the square void, and slotted die to open the corner mounting holes. (A similar process could probably work with different diameter drill bits in a drill press and some tedious filing/grinding to smooth out the edges.)
The shaft, interestingly enough, was a little trickier: in order to keep the profile as short as possible, we are notching the ends of the shaft so that the center of the shaft is in line with on side of the mounting plate. (That milling station would come in really handy for this!) We could use a metal band saw, but as our band saw is typically dedicated to wood materials, we're choosing to clamp our Portaband to a work table and carefully make axial- and cross-cuts to remove this chunk of material from either end. (This method isn't exactly the most accurate, but some finish work with a metal sander cleans it up nicely!)
To drill and tap the holes for mounting the shaft to the plate of our prototype, we first tack welded the shaft in place. Then we drilled through (from the plate side) both the plate and the shaft a hole to tap for a 10-24 bolt (one on either end of the shaft). We cut the tack welds (and ground down the slag), then tapped both holes in the mounting plate, and opened up the holes in the shaft to pass a 10-24 bolt easily.
And that's it: shop-built pallet caster. Here's a photo of the prototype (we plan to give all the steel a nice coat of matte black when we're finished with the actual pieces--or maybe shiny chrome):
Shop-built Pallet Casters!
by Rich Dionne
Sep 22, 2012
For our upcoming production of The Understudy at Purdue, we need to create a short (i.e., total height about 5") pallet/wagon to push a table and chairs on stage with. We want to use our stock 2 1/2"-tall triskit panels to save both time and money; unfortunately, this makes using our 4"-tall stock casters impossible to use. What to do?
Rosebrand sells a product they call the "Pallet Master Caster," essentially a wide, short wheel in a low-profile mounting plate. However, these sell for $22 a piece, more than I can afford to spend on casters for this unit. So I spent some time digging around the shop, to see what we might do instead, and found enough material that we'll be able to make our own shop-built pallet casters for free, and I thought I'd share how.
Full disclaimer: we have some materials left over from previous projects that other people may not have kicking around their shops; we also have some equipment that makes this project easy to complete that others may not have access to.
The key to this project is a number of lengths of 1 1/2" diameter Delrin rollers we purchased as wire-rope keepers for winch-drum frames. We didn't end up using them for that purpose, so they've literally been hanging out in the shop waiting for something to do. Delrin is an acetal plastic that has high impact resistance, structural strength, stiffness, and stability. The rollers we have are all a couple of feet long, with an (I believe) ABS plastic bushing core, and a 1/2" diameter center bore. A 3-inch-long length of roller makes a nice, small profile, pallet caster wheel.
We also have scrap lengths of 1/2" diameter mild steel rod hanging around the shop, left over from previous projects. These make a perfect shaft for the roller wheels to ride on. Finally, also kicking around the shop were a couple of scrap lengths of 1/4" thick, 3" wide mild steel plate. Ideally, I'd want the plate of the caster to be more like 3/16" thick, but beggars can't be choosers, right?
Three components: a wheel, a shaft, and a mounting plate. That's all it takes to make these pallet casters. That, and some time: we estimate that in a total of about 12 person-hours of labor, we can have six of these made, based on our prototype.
Ideally, we'd use a CNC milling station to prepare the mounting plate from the flat-steel stock: we need to remove a 3 1/4" by 1 3/4" square out of the center of the plate for the wheel to ride in, tap two holes on either side for securing the center shaft, and open four mounting holes (or slots) in the corners. We don't have a milling station--either CNC or manual--unfortunately. Instead, for our prototype we used our Scotchman ironworker, a hydraulic press for stamping steel up to 1/4" thick (conveniently the size of our plate). We used a 3/4" square die to to remove the material in the square void, and slotted die to open the corner mounting holes. (A similar process could probably work with different diameter drill bits in a drill press and some tedious filing/grinding to smooth out the edges.)
The shaft, interestingly enough, was a little trickier: in order to keep the profile as short as possible, we are notching the ends of the shaft so that the center of the shaft is in line with on side of the mounting plate. (That milling station would come in really handy for this!) We could use a metal band saw, but as our band saw is typically dedicated to wood materials, we're choosing to clamp our Portaband to a work table and carefully make axial- and cross-cuts to remove this chunk of material from either end. (This method isn't exactly the most accurate, but some finish work with a metal sander cleans it up nicely!)
To drill and tap the holes for mounting the shaft to the plate of our prototype, we first tack welded the shaft in place. Then we drilled through (from the plate side) both the plate and the shaft a hole to tap for a 10-24 bolt (one on either end of the shaft). We cut the tack welds (and ground down the slag), then tapped both holes in the mounting plate, and opened up the holes in the shaft to pass a 10-24 bolt easily.
And that's it: shop-built pallet caster. Here's a photo of the prototype (we plan to give all the steel a nice coat of matte black when we're finished with the actual pieces--or maybe shiny chrome):