Analysis of the Construction and Materials of Heavy Duty Casters
Time：Aug 18,2025
As critical components in the industrial and logistics sectors, the design rationality and material selection science of heavy-duty casters directly affect the operating efficiency, load-bearing safety, and service life of equipment. The following is a detailed analysis from the core structure and material characteristics:
Bracket Material and Construction: The Core Guarantee of Load-Bearing Capacity
The bracket is the 'skeleton' of the heavy-duty caster, bearing the main load pressure. Its material strength and structural design are key to the load-bearing capacity.
Material selection: High-strength metal materials are commonly used, including ordinary steel plates, cast steel, and forged steel. Ordinary steel plates are suitable for low to medium load scenarios. Cast steel achieves complex structures with high strength through casting processes. Forged steel further enhances material density and mechanical properties through forging processes, making it suitable for high load and impact resistance needs.
Thickness Specifications: The thickness of the steel plate is directly related to the load-bearing capacity. Common specifications are 8mm、10mm、16mm 和 20mm . For extra heavy-duty casters, such as those customized for the China Petroleum system with a load capacity of 12 吨的脚轮，钢板厚度可达 30mm , the mounting plate (a critical component for connecting to equipment) uses 40mm thick steel plates. Increasing the material thickness ensures structural stability under extreme loads, avoiding deformation or fracture risks.
Swivel Plate Design: Balancing Flexibility and Load
The swivel plate is the core component for achieving the caster's steering function, requiring both flexible rotation and load-bearing capabilities.
Basic Structure: Most heavy-duty casters use a double-layer steel ball raceway design for the swivel plate. The precise track structure is shaped through stamping, and then heat-treated (such as quenching and tempering) to improve surface hardness and wear resistance, ensuring smooth rolling of the steel balls within the track and reducing friction resistance.
Extra Heavy-Duty Upgrade: For ultra-high pressure load scenarios, the swivel plate of extra heavy-duty casters uses a flat ball bearing with greater stress, combined with a tapered roller bearing structure. The flat ball bearing disperses radial loads, and the tapered roller bearing bears axial pressure. The synergy between the two significantly improves the overall load capacity of the caster, adapting to load-bearing requirements of tens of tons.
Impact Resistance Optimization: The swivel plate of impact-resistant casters uses an integral forging process with forged steel, abandoning the traditional bolted and welded structure of connecting plates. This integrated design eliminates stress concentration hazards at welding points, allowing the swivel plate to evenly distribute force when subjected to impact loads (such as sudden stops or collisions), greatly enhancing impact resistance and extending service life.
Manufacturing Process and Material Adaptation: Key Aspects of Performance Implementation
The manufacturing process of heavy-duty casters is deeply adapted to the material characteristics, maximizing material performance through process optimization.
Core Processes:
Stamping: Used for mass production of standardized structures (such as steel ball raceways, bracket contours), ensuring dimensional accuracy and consistency.
Heat Treatment: Performing overall or local heat treatment on metal parts to adjust the mechanical properties of the material, such as improving hardness, wear resistance, and toughness, balancing strength and plasticity.
Forging: Plastic deformation of metal materials at high temperatures through forging, refining the grain structure and improving the tensile strength and fatigue resistance of the material, especially suitable for high-stress components (such as swivel plates, critical bracket nodes).
Synergy of Materials and Processes: The high strength and durability of metal materials are fully utilized through the above processes. For example, the forging process of forged steel combined with heat treatment can increase the material strength by 30% 以上，同时保持良好的韧性，为脚轮在复杂工况下的稳定运行提供保障。
Summary
The design of heavy-duty casters revolves around the two core goals of 'load-bearing safety' and 'durability'. Through the high-strength material and thickening design of the bracket, the structural optimization and bearing upgrade of the swivel plate, combined with precise manufacturing processes, a balance between load capacity, steering flexibility, and impact resistance is achieved. In fields such as industrial production, heavy logistics, and special equipment, rationally selecting heavy-duty casters that meet load requirements and operating conditions is an important prerequisite for ensuring efficient and safe equipment operation.
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