This invention pertains to the use of casters for moving heavy objects. More specifically, the invention relates to the provision of a flexible sheet material having casters distributed over its surface for attachment to objects of various sizes and shapes in order to enable them to be moved along the ground.
It is known in the art to employ casters in the form of wheels, balls, or other cylindrical or spherical rollers. Such casters or rollers are usually components of assemblies including rigid, and relatively heavy, platforms, with or with out handle assemblies, such as hand trucks and dollies. These devices are generally large, heavy, cumbersome, and expensive. Also, once purchased, their used is generally limited to objects within a narrow range of sizes.
It is desirable to be able to employ inexpensive casters on objects of virtually any size or shape, for permanent or temporary use.
It is known in the art to provide casters along rows and columns in a sheet of a rigid material that is scored to make the sheet frangible between the rows and columns. This enables portions of the material, each containing a caster, to be broken off for use, whereby one or more individual casters may be attached to an object for enabling it to be moved along a floor. Such a construction is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,559,802 to Eidus for a Caster Assembly.
The use of rigid sheets as disclosed by Eidus limits their usefulness on non-planar surfaces and makes the sheets difficult to store when suitably sized to support large objects. In addition, such sheets can be wasteful when only a portion of one sheet is to be used and the remainder is of a size too small to have immediate utility.