How to Maintain Caster Wheels

  When it comes to moving around big and heavy machinery and industrial equipment across your home, warehouse or office space, you can easily hit a number of tedious road blocks such as exhaustion, lack of support and inability to lift due to muscle injuries. This is where caster wheels comes in handy, having been the perfect solution for decades to anyone from industrial workers relocating heavy obejcts on a daily basis, to private people looking to move things around at home. At CoolYeah, we have years of experience when it comes to everything related to caster wheels, and these are our top tips for you and your business to assure the longest livelihood possible.  

  The common caster wheels are wheels firmly fixed on the inside of a fitting, though along with a special type of bearing in order to ensure 360 degree range of motion. By adding this function to any item of your choice, typically a cart or a wagon, you’re allowed nearly friction free movability in any direction without having to change the placement of your chassis.

  The caster wheel can be officially defined as follows; “A caster (also known as castor according to some dictionaries) is a wheeled device typically mounted to a larger object that enables relatively easy rolling movement of the object. Casters are essentially housings, that include a wheel and a mounting to install the caster to objects (equipment, apparatus and more). Casters are found virtually everywhere, from office desk chairs to shipyards, and from hospital beds to automotive factories. They range in size from the very small furniture casters to massive industrial casters, and individual load capacities span 100 pounds(45 kg) or less to 100,000 pounds (45 t). Wheel materials include cast iron, plastic, rubber, polyurethane, polyolefin, nylon, thermoplastic rubber, forged steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and more.”

How to Maintain Caster Wheels

Normally, caster wheels are engineered to last quite a long time in order to further increase their value. Although for commercial customer, they tend to be no small expense and run the risk to occasionally become damaged or defective if accurate maintenance is not thoroughly performed on a regular basis. Therefore, customers within every industry are encouraged to follow a few simple steps in order to ensure their caster wheels last as long as possible, no matter the environment.

 Proper Lubrication

  Set up a personal and consistent greasing and lubrication schedule according to your working standards. A common number being thrown around when it comes to the frequency of your lubrication, is six months. Although this timeframe should not be considered a universal recommendation due to the nature of many types of casters, meaning they’re often used in volatile environments where they frequently get wet. Other working conditions could include a greater exposure to highly corrosive materials.

   In both of these cases, you want to up the frequency of your greasing and lubrication schedule aiming to tick of the task at least once each month in order to ensure their integrity.

  Another crucial aspect when it comes to giving your caster wheels the best chance to stay alive for as long as possible is to check the status of your hardware fittings, making sure the wheels stay in the right place and doesn’t move around or wiggle – or fall off completely. These have tendency to regularly wear and tear, maybe rightfully so, since they’re working against the forces of gravity on a day to day basis, in what tends to be rather rough environments.

   Every piece of hardware attached to casters are recommended to be turned on its side about once a month in order for business owners, or any private people dealing with casters on a frequent basis, to inspect them. During these monthly checkups, keep an eye on the nuts, bolts, screws, and any other fittings keeping the wheel in place. If you stumble upon any piece of hardware being out of place, bent or worn in an unnatural manner, make sure to replace these immediately. These minor defects might not seem like a big deal once first encountered, though over time these small flaws can ruin a caster and force you to replace them. All in all, fixing these errors sooner rather than later will save you both time and money in the long run.

  Another important aspect to take into account in order to carry out proper maintenance for your casters, is to keep the integrity of the wheels themselves. The CoolYeah casters always come with a rubber fitting allowing your new wheels to perform cleaner turns with a lot less noise than traditional caster wheels. Ensure these aren’t damaged or flattened once performing your scheduled checkup. When these get damaged, they have a tendency to over time wear out your caster wheels, and may even cancel out the work you put in during previous steps in the maintenance process.

  Therefore, make sure to regularly evaluate the wheel’s treads and construction to ensure no major damage has been made. Although if this is the case, replace these treads with news ones in order to prevent having to purchase brand new caster wheels all together. Aim to have these inspections carried out at least once a month, if you’re using your casters on a frequent basis.