Rex B wrote:

Koz wrote:

Yea, those chinese casters mostly work. Good casters cost though and
there IS a difference (I aint got a clue if cheapcasters are any good
but MSC does have some good ones) Although I do generally go cheap
chinese, there are times when the good USA versions (which DO empty
your wallet) are worth it. I look at it the same way I look at tools
in general: Dollar store tool? Yea maybe for some things that don't
really matter much but a good one I only have to buy once.

A 1000 pound tool box which may be carrying $ 20,000 in tools
deserves some really good casters. Expect to pay about 70 bucks a
piece and expect to be happy with that cost 40 years from now when it
is still rolling just fine.

Koz (who has seen dozens of the cheap casters collapse on cusstomer's
equipment)


In my case, I'm just trying to get all my shop furniture mobile, so
I'm spending ing $20 per piece to do that. I'll probably get better
casters for the Enco lathe, but the rest should do fine on the cheapies.
OTOH, shouldn't a Chinese lathe have Chinese casters??

Doin the same here with cheepo harbor freights. They're lousy and a
pain but stuff doesn't really move enough to justify better for 90% of
things. However, for anything critical or really heavy, do dig deeper
into your wallet. Nothing worse than one sticky caster that
unexpectedly jams while moving that lathe and it's inertia....

If it's a chinese lathe, it should be equipped with 12 chinese guys who
make $ 80 a month to just muscle it into place using old 2 x 4s

Koz (who is often amazed at what an army of those chinese guys can move
when there is no forklift available)

damn..had to get a last word in...we installed a huge piece of equipment
in China without a forklift once....ground was muddy so they piped the
freezer to freeze the ground and pulled the equipment into the plant
using donkeys and old pipes as rollers. Interesting that they were
happy to spend several hundred grand on the machine but a simple
forklift was a far out idea to them. ("Why would we need one of those?")