Polyurethane is a versatile material used for its toughness, durability, and elasticity. Urethane products can replace plastic, metal, or rubber due to their resistance to abrasion, oils, solvents, and weather. Urethane wheels are commonly used in machinery and household items such as skateboards and escalators. They are more durable than metal or plastic wheels and resist expansion due to centrifugal force. Urethane wheels are also used in wood and metal shops for polishing, deburring, and finishing.
Polyurethane, or urethane, is a material that is used for its beneficial properties of toughness, durability, and rubber-like elasticity. Because the material can vary between soft and hard, urethane products can replace other items that might otherwise use a different material, such as plastic, metal, or rubber. Other beneficial properties of applying urethane include resistance to abrasion, resistance to oils and solvents, high load capacity, strong tear resistance, strong weather resistance, and increased durability. These beneficial properties make polyurethane wheels some of the most common types of wheels used in machinery and mechanized work. They can also be found on common household items such as skateboards or commercial machines such as escalators.
Prior to the use of urethane wheels, roller skates and skateboards used metal or wooden wheels which proved to be inefficient, noisy and expensive to build and replace. A plastic wheel was then used, which proved to be brittle and hard; it would break in case of violent shocks and sliding friction. Urethane wheels then became commonly used for roller skates and skateboards, and while they were as hard as plastic wheels, they did not experience as much abrasion as quickly or crack under heavy impact and sliding friction. These wheels also have a concentrically set bearing for easy wheel replacement and rotation. One downside to using urethane wheels on roller skates and skateboards is that they don’t grip as much as other types of wheels.
In transportation devices such as escalators, where wheels are often used to guide the process, it is important that the device has durable urethane wheels. These wheels were and still are used on escalators, but the material composition is much stronger than it was in urethane wheels of the past. They are high tensile, cured and made from polyurethane polymers, forming an extended chemical chain. Urethane wheels have been found to be highly resistant to abrasion compared to metal, plastic or rubber wheels.
Urethane wheels are also used in wood and metal shops as a replacement for fixtures that might use metal or other hard materials. One type of these wheels is deformable and highly flexible, being used in processes such as polishing, deburring and finishing of metal products. Urethane wheels also resist expansion due to centrifugal force and are very dense, allowing them to last three to five times longer than ordinary spiral finishing wheels used for finishing, polishing and deburring metals. The wheels used for these purposes are made from materials found in plastics and use very little filler.
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