Home Made Machine Skates Ideas/Plans

Hello all! This is my first time posting in the rigging forum, and I'd like some opinions on a design for home made machine skates I have:

The rolling surfaces will be 1/2 x 1 1/8 bearings and have a static load rating of 530lb: McMaster-Carr
The plates that hold the axles (1/2 drill rod) will be 3/4 x 6 x 1 3/4 with the holes drilled appropriately. Since I am using 18 of them per skate, I'd assume that I can handle my 6000 lb mill with four of them. Any ideas on if I should wrap the bearings in something, and if so what? This will just be for moving the mill across concrete in my garage. Anything over the pavement will merit disassembling the mill into the 3000lb, 1000lb, 500lb, 500lb pieces which I will then drag around using a pallet jack. (I know there is weight missing from that, it's all the small parts that I can carry by hand)

Also, I went a little crazy on the bearings as in Canada the only source I could find that sells them for a reasonable price sells them in a package of 100.

Edit: It appears I've attached the thumbnail, here is the full drawing: Home Made Machine Skates - Album on Imgur

Interesting concept. I like having more floor clearance... The side view makes it appear tangent.

Have you looked on eBay for these? ... I got my last 2 sets there very reasonable.

2 pallet jack replacement wheels is what I'd be designing around.

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I'll probably drill a bit closer to the bottom of the piece, I like to position it all out when I have the parts on hand. And unfortunately ebay Canada is quite slim pickings for the skates haha

KevinPartner said:

I'll probably drill a bit closer to the bottom of the piece, I like to position it all out when I have the parts on hand. And unfortunately ebay Canada is quite slim pickings for the skates haha

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Yours may very well turn out better, but.. I only need them now and then, and have far too many other projects not getting done.

Instead of DIY I have six or eight each of the Northern Tool "Strongway" 3300 lbs steel roller and 4400 lb poly-roller skates. The poly-roller ones are already kitted-out to hook together to make a "magic carpet" as wide or long or both as you have unit-count for.

Grabbed the first pair, then more since, whenever Northern had any sort of sale, promotion, or discount. Also some "Vestil" brand ones.

Literally a wheel that I didn't see spending the time to re-invent, IOW.

IMO, the skates are too narrow and prone to tipping. You'd be better served to use a wide center section, like a piece of C channel and weld the axle to it or pass it through the web and have bearings on either side.

I don't know why, but all skates have a tendency to tip on their sides. Usually this is caused by a slight misalignment of the skates causing a side load as you roll forward. The wider the better.

I made up 24 skates a few months ago, put them to use a few weeks ago, machines will live on skates for the next year, so I needed more than 3 or 4. I used 1/2" flat stock, 5.5" wide, cut into 5.5" x 4" sections, welded 2 axles to bottom, used 4 bearings per axle (8 bearings per skate). For bearings I used el cheapo 100 packs of bearings, two of them.

The concrete outside the door has a broom finish, they did not roll easily on that, but once inside the door it is a smooth finish and they rolled easily.

For light loads they may work well enough. But standard bearings are not made to carry a concentrated load on the outer ring. "Cam-follower rollers" are made for that. Also, even though the design you show will twist and wobble some, the bearings will not all share the load even roughly equally. And I see no easy way to securely attach the skates to the load.

I was just going to post an idea I use and like much better for moving machinery...See post titled "Machinery Skis"

magneticanomaly said:

For light loads they may work well enough. But standard bearings are not made to carry a concentrated load on the outer ring. "Cam-follower rollers" are made for that. Also, even though the design you show will twist and wobble some, the bearings will not all share the load even roughly equally. And I see no easy way to securely attach the skates to the load.

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Aye. That's IMPORTANT!!

Some while back, "right here on PM", we anal-eyes-ed those 3300 lb rated Northern Skates.

The eight bearings looked-up to a combined load rating of over 40,000 lbs. Yet even Northern (and/or the Chinese maker) claim but 3300 lbs. They had allowed for what was just pointed-out, also for asymmetrical loads, and for shock loads.

FWIW-not-much, my Vestil's used but 4 bearings and claim a 10,000 lb rating. I can only hope that is off the back of better bearings, but I still trust the Chinese ones more because they have put my "eggs" into eight baskets, not just four, and the diameter is around half that of the Vestils I own.

Result is that a bearing fail causes lesser drop, which is lower acceleration as well.

These are relatively cheap and easy to build. They moved my 8000# American lathe. Click the pick for another view.

I got some a couple years ago from Grizzly , there 6K each but moved a 20K mill with 3 of them by my self ... they look the same as the cheap ones on ebay for like 80 bucks ... you would need three and a toe jack ,, i think the toe jack was like $260 but its worth it ..

I welded some short pipes to the back of two of the skates and slide a rod threw them to keep them from turning then use the single third skate to turn ,,,

I went to home dump on there slow evening time and got them to cut two full sheet of good 1/2" plywood into 5 7/8" by 11 7/8" blocks ..

D.D.Machine said:

i think the toe jack was like $260 but its worth it ..

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First Chinese one held a 4K+ load for a week with only 25% leak-down, I bought it a twin.
Kicking meself for not doing it 40 years ago.

Anything else, there's plenty of other options. Toe-jack substitute involves a lot of sweat, swearing, get down and dirty and time wasted, if not also risk.