Choosing the right castor

Institutional castors are the castors which address to the market of services. Usually they are applied to trolleys for light use, for applications such as; catering equipment, health CARE EQUIPMENT, professional furniture equipment, super market trolleys, product displays, POS etc. The European norm for this kind of products is the EN 12527 / EN-12530 which fully describes their requirements and testing procedure parameters as well.

To choose the right castor, it is really important for the Ergonomy of the operators as well as for the people who are in the same environment (e.g. patients in a hospital).

The main factors that should be taken into consideration to define the most appropriate castor for a specific application are:

• The ground conditions
• The weight
• The environmental conditions (water, moisture, chemicals. Temperature, hygienic requirements)
• The type of the application (mainly static or dynamic)
• Electric conductivity

A castor should not create any problems to the environment while being in use.

Problems that should be avoided are:

• noise
• vibrations
• damage of the floor

Additionally, a wheel should roll easily and have a prerequisite service life for the specific conditions of its operations.

Rolling resistance it is the main factor that defines how easily a wheel rolls under a certain load and it is very important and critical during the operation.
It is actually the force we have to use in order to start rolling a trolley or to maintain the rolling of it; however in institutional applications in most cases the carried loads are limited to cause fatigue to the truck handler.
Rolling resistance is quite critical to applications like super market trolleys and health care and catering equipment since in those cases it is also affecting the maneuverability which is a must.

Factors that affect the rolling resistance regarding the working conditions are:

• the carrying weight
• the situation of the floor.

and regarding the wheel are:

• the material of the axis
• the tire of the wheel