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Posted by hipstomp / Rain Noe | 14 Sep 2012
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Comments (3)
Following yesterday's post on the spherical drive system, my fellow Pratt ID alumnus Jay G. wrote in with where those omniwheels may have come from. An Australian company called Rotacaster produces the crazy-looking wheels, sometimes called "Ezekiel Wheels," you see here. The wheels are used in the Rotatruck Stair Climbing Hand Truck:
Why are they called Ezekiel Wheels? Here's where it gets interesting: The wheels' designer, Henry Guile, claims their inspiration came from The Bible:
The first chapter of Ezekiel describes a vehicle with four wheels and "their appearance and their work was as if it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel." From this simple idea, the Ezekiel Wheel was born.
Guile reportedly worked on the design of the wheels for years but was never able to get it quite right. But his son Graham picked up where he left off and perfected the design. The father and the son, and I guess the Holy Ghost fits in there somewhere too.
Comments
Cool concept, but like so many other ideas the omni wheel was used in another industry for some time. For many years the C-17 cargo plane has used these on the cargo ramp to allow equipment such as cargo pallets the ability to spin and rotate in a number of directions. That being said this hand truck would be good on hard surfaces.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v718/Mike_Shreeve/Watsonville%202009/IMG_7746.jpg
Hi LP,
First - thanks to hipstomp / Rain Noe for their post.
2nd - for disclosure - I work with Rotacaster in Australia
3rd LP - you are right, the omni wheel has been around for some time. The reason it has not yet caught on, is the lack of truly robust wheels to be used in industrial applications. The metal ones used in such applications as the C17 are too expensive for traditional industry. However, Rotacaster has now developed the first truly reliable hard working multi-directional wheels, or as we like to call them - Rotacasters. We have also developed the self supporting hand trucks to illustrate just what can be done with this type of wheel with a bit of ingenuity. You can see video of some of these solutions on Youtube on our channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/rotacaster?feature=guide
This wheel is coming of age now, and there are a lot of great new solutions coming.
That is quite ingenious! I would definitely use one of those during a big move.