Material Handling Equipment is a general term used to define mechanical equipment used for the movement, storage and control of products and materials. Material Handling Equipment is used in many environments, such as manufacturing plants, warehouse & distribution centers, hospitals and shopping centers. The primary objective of the handling equipment is to reduce manual handling (user fatigue) and increase speed and capacity of a company’s output. Castors and Wheels play a major part in many material handling applications.
Particularly common in high volume production and handling environments, Conveyors are used where material is moved along a fixed path as parts of a particular process, whether that be a manufacturing process such as a bottling & labelling of whisky bottles, or sorting of recycled waste. Conveyors are used in many environments to handle high volume of materials.
Conveyors can be a fixed part of a company’s production line, they may be portable by installing Castor Wheels, allowing the conveyor to be used in various areas of a production facility, or they may be semi-portable, where they are mounted on levelling feet and may be moved on rare occasions.
Powered Handling Equipment includes Fork Lift Trucks, Pallet Lifts, Side Loaders and other powered Trucks and Carts. Generally used to move heavy and/or bulky material and equipment, and unlike a conveyor can be used to transport goods or equipment to any place that the operator may decide, which also includes lifting, for example a Fork Truck. Powered Handling equipment is commonly found in large warehouses and distribution centers and can be used for loading or unloading pallets from Lorries and moving material in a warehouse. Some types of equipment are semi-powered, where the heavy lifting is powered by hydraulics but the maneuvering is still conducted by the manual efforts of the operator. Most powered handling equipment use Castors and Wheels, such as Fork Lift Wheels and Rollers, Trolley Wheels & Cart Wheels. Depending on the environment the equipment is being used, different types of Castors and wheels may be used, for example Polyurethane for Fork Trucks, Rubber Heavy Duty Trolley Wheels or Pneumatic Wheels for rough and uneven ground.
The most common types of handling equipment are generally manually controlled, and utilise Castors Wheels. These include Trolleys (such as shopping Trolley Wheels or warehouse Trolley), Dollies for moving heavy equipment or furniture and general trucks and carts. Manual equipment requires the operator to control the equipment by walking, pushing or pulling in order to move the equipment. One example would be a manual pallet lift which uses Castor wheels mounted under the equipment to allow the operator to move a pallet into the required position and then manual pump the lift using manually controlled hydraulics. These types of equipment are normally used for light duty lifting and maneuvering , where the activity is not continuous. Black rubber castors are common on manual handling equipment. The size of the castor is particular important for manual equipment, where Large castor wheels reduce the roll resistance and reduce the manual effort.
Bulldog Castors Ltd operates in a multitude of industries, in which most incorporate material handling equipment in some form. Our technical department has decades of expertise in the design and application of handling equipment and can assist in the design of new equipment, offer castor wheel recommendations and help solve problems or source difficult to source spare parts.
Bulldog can be contacted at sales@bulldogcastors.co.uk or +44 (0)116 2970521 for free technical advice.
The Bulldog Product Range can be found at www.bulldogcastors.co.uk
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