Custom Casters and Wheels at Service Caster Corporation

There are thousands of different casters and caster wheels on the market, enough for any situation, environment, and job. Well, almost. Every now and then there is a project that requires a little extra work to meet unique and specific requirements. Thats where Service Caster’s custom fabrication team comes in.

Custom work can take the form of the very small, such as a caster stem for a chair that does not fall into the modern day standards, or the very large, such as a wheel for mining operations.

Welding a Custom Caster

How do you take advantage of our abilities to custom make your perfect wheel? The first step is to give us a call and discuss with us the project that you’re working on. We will ask questions like, “What kind of surface will the wheels roll on?” and “Will there be high speeds, or side thrust on the caster?” These questions will help us determine if you actually need custom work, or if there is

something out there in the “caster-verse” that is readily available. Once we’ve determined you need custom work, we will develop with you the exact specification of your wheel and caster. Everything from the top plate or stem down to the very bottom of the wheel’s tread.

Custom Tread Lock

In addition to phone calls, specs can be emailed, and images along with physical samples can go a long way to making sure you get exactly what you need.

Finally, we’ll have our design team, machinists, and assemblers produce your custom caster!

What Are Kingpinless Casters?

Kingpinless casters, as the name suggests, are casters that lack a kingpin. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? What is the purpose of the kingpin, and why would you remove it? Read on to find out.

The kingpin is a feature found in most light to heavy duty swivel casters, though it is generally not used in ultra-light duty casters such as chair casters. It is essentially a rivet, and its job is to hold the top plate and the fork of the caster together, allowing for a ball bearing housing between the two units that in turn allows the caster to swivel properly. The kingpin also tends to be a weak point in situations that put heavy stress on the caster, such as shock loading. In these cases, the kingpin can bend or even break, allowing the ball bearings to fall out and causing caster failure.

Kingpinless Fork
A Kingpinless Fork

The answer to this caster failure is the kingpinless caster. Kingpinless casters are precisely engineered and machined to allow swiveling without a kingpin. The lack of the kingpin removes the casters’ typical weakest link, and provides a casters that can handle shock loading and heavy stress without failure.

Most kingpinless casters are only available at the heavy and extra heavy duty levels of casters, since the easier-to-produce kingpinned casters can handle light and medium duty jobs with ease.

Take a look at kingpinless casters at our online catalog.