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ISB Ball Transfer

What is a Ball Transfer?

ISB ball transfer units consist of a large load-ball that sits upon small balls encapsulated in a hemispherical cup.
ISB Ball Transfers fall into two categories; Ball-Up type for Upward Use, and Ball-Down type for Downward castor-like Use.
Also, in some applications they are used as guides for side support. Their design creates a multi-directional,
materialhandlingsystem that enables heavy loads to be moved smoothly along with minimal effort and friction.
They are designed to assist in transferring, directing, or facilitating loading of flat products in workplaces such as warehouses,
production lines, port cargo handling facilities, semiconductor production systems, FPD production system, PV,
Solar glass handling production lines, medical equipments, research laboratories, underground facilities of buildings and
offices manufacturing or freight transfer. Similar to a roller system, the balls are installed within the table or work surface and
the product rolls over the balls and allows for turning, lifting, directing or transferring from one conveyor line to another.
People with lifting or carrying restrictions resulting from back, neck, shoulder, heart, and various repetitive strain injuries may
benefit from the use of ball transfer technology if lifting or handling flat products on a repetitive basis within the workplace.

Starting friction of Ball Transfers

The data below obtained by testing the mechanical resistance of four IS-51 ball-up castor type catalog model ball transfers conveying 1000 kg load.
To compare and consider various articles; we measured on raw SS steels (mill scale and polished), and hardened (SK steel, hardness HRC60, polished).

Determining the load for a Ball Transfer unit

ISB ball transfers come in two categories, pressed/molded type for light load, and precision-machined type for heavy loads.
When considering ball transfers for an application, the border line for light/heavy loads are approx. 1100lbs. Equal load distribution over many
ball transfers is seldom, if ever achieved. Load distribution is governed by the flatness, hardness and smoothness of the load surface in
contact with the balls and the ball transfer installation height variance and system deflection. Absolute flatness of the application design
is difficult to ensure under field service conditions. To determine the load rating required per units simply divide the ball transfer load
capacity by 2 for pressed and molded products and 2/3 for machine-cut products.