Mounting Castors Correctly Makes All The Difference

By Author: Mark Farrell
Total Articles: 56
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It is a well known fact that castors mounted on furniture or other equipment has a number of advantages. They make moving these sometimes large and bulky objects around easy, especially useful when trying to clean behind them or when having to regularly rearrange furniture in a room. Sometimes, castors come already attached to the appliance or piece of furniture, but at other times they have to be manually mounted. Depending on the piece of equipment in question, fixing can either be a relatively uncomplicated task, or it can be quite involved.

For a normal household chair or table, fixing a set of castors is quite simple. Some castors come with a bolthole fixing or a top plate. The bolthole fixing is normally round with a single hole, whereas the top plate is normally square/rectangular and has four holes to fix through. Generally, at least four castors are necessary for any piece of equipment. However, this can vary depending on the number of legs on a piece of furniture, which may be three or even eight at times. Nevertheless, in a standard four legged piece of furniture or equipment it is always best when fixing ...
... castors to have a combination of two swivels and two rigid ones, or if absolutely necessary have all four as swivel. While four swivel castors make the maneuvering of equipment in any direction easy, the combination of two swivel and two rigid is ideal if equipment should be moved in a straight line.

An important fact to bear in mind when mounting castors to furniture is the practicality of it in terms of future maintenance or repair. Will they be easy to replace if the need arises? Will they take a long time to change? Grip ring stem models are the least time consuming to attach and replace and are commonly found on institutional and household furniture. These are supplied with an attached steel stem at the top which easily slips and locks into place in a socket. On the other hand, threaded stem castors are more durable than the grip ring stem ones. Fixing them with threaded stems to equipment requires the furniture to have a tapped bore. Either with the help of an adapter, or without, the threaded stem is locked in place into the tapped bore.

Whether the castors are installed with a threaded stem, a plain stem, grip ring, top plate, bolthole or expanding adapter, there are many factors that need to be considered at first. Settling on a particular method of mounting would depend on external factors such as the floor surface, area to be covered, load of cargo, if the appliance is to be pushed or pulled, if it is manual or machine operated and which is most cost effective.

BIL is one of the leading UK manufacturers and distributors of Castors and wheels. Our Castors , wheels and fittings range has been developed with the help of both our customers and component suppliers alike. Producing the highest quality Castors and associated wheels has always been our aim since day one, and we believe this has added to BIL's ongoing success in the Castors and wheels market.