The Customer… is a manufacturer of powered access lifts and develops 100% of them at the headquarters in Great Britain. The company specializes in manufacturing products for access to working at height. It is safer and more effective to reach surroundings that are 4-5 metres high compared to ladders or steps.

The Challenge

For the mobile powered access lifts, the customer used drive wheels and swivel casters from our competitors. The products are mainly used inside of factories, so the company needed a higher grip polyurethane drive wheel that offered a combination of good traction and low rolling resistance. Low rolling resistance plays an important role in the requirement for manual handling. Working platforms that are used indoors are battery operated to prevent the emission of harmful exhaust gases in enclosed spaces. In order to make possible a long battery life, the customer wanted a swivel caster also with low rolling resistance.

Our Solution

The drive wheel GSTN with the polyurethane elastomer Blickle Softhane® tread is best suited for the above application. Especially the high operational comfort and the grip distinguish this tread. On customer request, the wheel was delivered with a grey non marking tread and with a black lacquered wheel center adapted to the powered access lifts.
The low rolling resistance GTH wheel was made with a reduced offset to incorporate it into existing machine design. Furthermore, the caster was equipped with a location for an onboard directional locking system that could be activated remotely by the operator.

The result

The use of the wheels has shown that the designed solutions matched the customer‘s existing aesthetic requirements and fitted into the existing machine design. The improved rolling resistance also allowed the customer to save a significant amount of energy and increased the battery performance.