Looking for Globe Casters!
 

Team 1535 The Knights of Alloy, here. :)
We are looking for a certain type of casters, they are called 'Globe Casters'.
We have seen them on robots in the past.

Unlike a normal caster they are like a large ball bearing instead of a wheel. The ones that we have seen on other robots looked almost exactly like those orange street hockey balls. They have full movement in every direction. We have found a few but they are more for industrial use and weigh close to 10lbs a piece! That is way too heavy for this game as many of you know!

Does anyone know where we could find some?

Thanks,
Team 1535 Knights of Alloy.

Re: Looking for Globe Casters!
 

They're called ball transfers. McMaster Carr has them.

Re: Looking for Globe Casters!
 

I found some at McMaster.com.

Search under casters.

Re: Looking for Globe Casters!
 

You can get ball transfers from MSC, also.

Both the ones sold by McMaster Carr and MSC are smaller than what you are originally looking for, and most have metal balls. However, they have been used by many teams with good results.

Re: Looking for Globe Casters!
 

1458 used them last year and our biggest problem was after a while they got tons of gunk on them. As it was my first year I had to fun job of fileing the gunk off.

they worked perfectly though

Re: Looking for Globe Casters!
 

As others have noted these are known as ball transfer casters. You can get them in 'ball up' or 'ball down' configurations- and made from vinyl/steel/stainless/brass. They don't run so well on concrete... and you can get very large balls if you need to.

There's a company local to Rochester NY that carries these items and ships them- I can get the address if you're interested as well as my contact there (I purchased them for another project).

Let me know-

Jason

Re: Looking for Globe Casters!
 

That would be great. I am also on the team (as you could tell) If you could send me the address (via Private Message) that would be great.
Thanks,
Boonski
1535 Knights of Alloy

Re: Looking for Globe Casters!
 

Castersupply.com LLC.
1780 Ridge Rd. E., Suite 200 Rochester, NY

http://www.castersupply.com/

I'm at another office and can't get the gentleman's name right now, unfortunately. They're very friendly... and it helps the local economy! :)

http://www.castersupply.com/NAV/stor..._transfers.htm

Re: Looking for Globe Casters!
 

As andy said the major problem is that they are held in a housing. Thus the wheel grabs junk brings it into the housing then it stays there. If you want to use them buy many, we replaced them on an average of a new one one every 4 games (after 2 regionals and nationals, thats a lot of ball transfers)