| 摘要 |
A caster is disclosed to provide a mobile support for a burden. The burden may be home or office furniture or may be industrial, laboratory or production equipment. The caster may be inverted and held in a stationary position, and used to support a moving conveyor. In short, the caster enables low friction and an instant way of changing direction on a full 360 DEG plane with a minimum resistance to realign all casters involved into a new direction. The caster is built into a housing body having a semi-spherical socket with a ball caster smaller than the socket residing in the socket and thereby providing a space therebetween for holding a plurality of spherical bearings. The number of bearings is less than that required to fill the space in order to assure recirculation of the bearing balls. However, the balls are retained in the service position by a retainer and/or circular integral races built into the semi-spherical socket. The preferred embodiment of the invention places the support of the burden on the housing body at locations spaced from the vertical axis whereby any housing body flexure will be resisted by the bearing nearest the equator of the caster ball to maintain the spherical form of the socket and full bearing load on all bearings. In all embodiments, an antistatic and lubricating feature maintains the caster free of statically attracted dirt.
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