Mechanical Design Challenge

[eaglewood]

I've run into a non-plc issue that is proving hard to solve.

I'm designing a mechanical device that has a base/foundation that must satisfy the below three design parameters:

Small footprint - about 3 feet in diameter, max.
Heavy - several hundred pounds
Mobile - easy to push manually, possibly with powered assistance, to a precise location

Obviously, satisfying all three is a tall order.

The dream/fantasy solution would be like an oversized 800 lb hockey pocket, two feet in diameter, that can be moved easily, like a puck sliding across ice. Or maybe like R2D2.

The closest thing I've found so far is a drum dolly on casters. I can load this drum dolly up with 800lbs of steel and reach my weight requirements. This may in fact be my final solution, but I'm anticipating it being hard to move precisely.

Perhaps picture a drum dolly that is motorized or floating on air (fantasy?).

Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Steve Bailey]

Google "Air pallet". Whether or not it's applicable to your situation depends on the nature of the surfaces you have to traverse.

 

[strantor]

Google "Air pallet". Whether or not it's applicable to your situation depends on the nature of the surfaces you have to traverse.

+1 also google "air skates" - different/same. We used them to move conexes around in a warehouse before. Once they're up on air you can shove them around like they're on oiled ice.
...until you hit a crack in the otherwise perfectly smooth polished concrete warehouse floor.

 

[Ken Roach]

The industry leaders in "air casters" are down the road from me here south of Seattle:

https://www.aerogo.com/

We just commissioned a system where we move the lifting base for a certain Very Big Spaceship using little electric hand tugs and their air casters. It was the least challenging part of the machine because we bought it from them and bolted it on underneath the weldments.