Air Casters
Mother NECESSITY
In 2015, I was in a production meeting with the Scenic Designer for The Virginia Samford Theatre’s production of Rock of Ages where it was brought up that for this show we needed a way to have a platform that could be used for some pole dancing during one of the scenes. This platform needed to be moveable while ensuring safety for the actress to do what was required in the scene. I brought up that one way we could achieve this safely was to build the base of the platform out of 1 1/2” steel box tube capped with 3/4” plywood and use Air Casters to make the platform moveable when needed but would also allow for this piece to not move around when it wasn’t needed to. I had never built Air Casters before but I had used them on a production while I was an apprentice at The Santa Fe Opera. After doing a good bit of research on how to build them, I had plan to get a couple built to begin testing out.
Testing the Theory
Once all of the materials arrived it was time to dry fit the pieces and test out the theory to make sure it would work before building the full thing.
Construction
After a successful theory test, I began to construct the air casters.
I started by drilling a hole into a 1/2” thick PVC Square and using a tap and dye set to thread the holes for pneumatic fittings.
I cut out sections of PVC pipe and sandwiched a square piece of flat rubber in between the white PVC pipe ring and a circular grey PVC caster disc that the caster attaches to. When air is pushed through the pneumatic fittings on the caster plate, the rubber inflates and pushes the caster disc down and lifts the unit onto the wheels.
For the final step, I attached the caster to the caster disc.
Platform Construction
The platform was designed as a 1’ tall 6’ wide octagon. I started by welding the top frame and then welded the legs.
After the top frame and legs were welded on, I welded the bottom frame onto the legs.
Once I finished welding the platform together, I welded the 2 pieces of steel that the casters attached to and attached the casters and air tank to the platform.
The 1st test
Now that everything is built and assembled, it’s time to take them for a test run…
1st takeaways
After doing the 1st test, I learned 2 major things.
1: There is air leaking from somewhere.
2: It moved. This will work.
Back to work
After more isolated tests, I was able to find where my air was leaking from. My air loss was coming from in between the rubber piece that lifts the unit up and the PVC caster plate. In order to fix this issue, I took some J-B Weld SteelStik moldable epoxy putty and sealed up the areas around where the rubber met the PVC caster plate.
Final product
With all the tests done and bugs worked out, it’s time for the final product. The only thing left to do is to cut the hole in the ply where the Schedule 40 Pipe will fit in. We also faced the front 5 sides with Plexiglas and installed led tape inside the frame so we could light up the underside.