Machine skates plans

All,

I am looking for plans to make some machine skates. I do not have a LASER or a plasma but do have CNC mill and lathe.

Thanks

Jim

A thread on some
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...ne-service-269080/?highlight=Shop+made+skates

Search
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/search.php?searchid=16179090&pp=&page=2

jimk1960 said:

All,

I am looking for plans to make some machine skates. I do not have a LASER or a plasma but do have CNC mill and lathe.

Thanks

Jim

Click to expand...

I have used some Hillman's, own Vestil (Indiana, USA?), Northern Tool (China, but better-grade than Harbor Freight), and can't imagine making my own for less than used Hillmans or new Vestil or Northern.

Anyhoo.. Hillman or a coupla pricer-yet German outfits if you want to copy good 'uns.

By the time you buy decent rollers, you may have already spent more that store-boughts, complete, boxed, delivered. "Mass production" and high-volume parts purchase thing.

Really not much need for plans, I am in the midst of building 24 for myself. 1/2" thick flat stock 6" wide, cut into 4" x 6" pieces on bandsaw. 5/8" oil hardening drill rod cut to 6" lengths, weld to plates with 1" overhanging each side. Press on 2 R10ZZ bearings on each axle stub (8 bearings per skate)

dalmatiangirl61 said:

Really not much need for plans, I am in the midst of building 24 for myself. 1/2" thick flat stock 6" wide, cut into 4" x 6" pieces on bandsaw. 5/8" oil hardening drill rod cut to 6" lengths, weld to plates with 1" overhanging each side. Press on 2 R10ZZ bearings on each axle stub (8 bearings per skate)

Click to expand...

We looked up the bearings on the 8-bearing, "3,300 lb" Northern ones in an older PM thread.

Combined rating for the eight was over 40,000 lbs, rolling, but NO SHOCK LOAD figures were handy to us, and they can get a good deal of shock loading when there is a surface imperfection or even a stray metal washer lying in their path.

Skate has two 5/8" axles, uses a thinner broad U channel rather than thicker flat plate. I appreciate that when carrying them about.

My US-made Vestil closest-equivalants also use a channel section, have but FOUR bearings, one each end of two 3/4" axles, are wider. Even so, those are rated at 10,000 lbs each.

The Chinese ones have a least a 100% margin over that 3,300 lb rating, 'coz I have loaded them up around there, briefly, as uneven surface and moving load take their usual imperfect course. I'd bet the Vestil's also have a 100% margin of reserve.

Both makers used circlips - stout ones - in grooves for "wheel" retention, BTW.

Even a rather tight press fit can become much less-so, and "yesterday-fast" under high-stress conditions.

3CW

Concrete at new place is smooth, I considered buying some, but decided to just build, only thing to be purchased was the bearings. Pretty sure I'm going to have to shove it all down to one end of room while half the floor gets painted, then shove them to other side so I can paint other half. Nothing over 4500 lbs, as long as they make it 200' I think I'll be ok. Considered snap rings, but think the press fit will work, guess I could add some jeezless clips if need be.

dalmatiangirl61 said:

..guess I could add some jeezless clips if need be.

Click to expand...

I surely would do at least that.

I've seen metal deform, wheels fire-off the end of an axle at a high rate of knots with a crack like a rifle shot.

Nice thing about low-profile skates, though is that USUALLY even if the load tips onto the wreckage of a failed skate, it has only about 1/2" to 3/4" to drop anyway, so dasn't tip clear over.

Casters, OTOH? "not on my watch" for anything over 1,000 lbs. per set of four, alleged ratings be damned.

Those are taller per any given load, want to balk at swiveling, fail sideways, can be nastier surprises by far as bad news goes.

Also actually harder to steer predictably when loaded than even rather marginal skates.

Get nice high-grade wheels on a caster?

Yah but...look at the alleged bearings and the cheap-ass riveted pin midst of the swivel-usually-not-always stamped bearing-race-sorta mounting plate.

Not a good scene, most of them. And then they corrode, wear, get full of debris.

Take a length of channel and bore a hole in leg of channel to stick a shaft through it as a axle and put roller bearings on it as wheels. Or you can just use pipes to move stuff