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Industrial sliding door rollers solve a bicycle storage problem.

Elraco Distributors were approached by the Inner “West Community Enterprises” in Footscray (Victoria) to help solve a problem that the “Community Bike Shed” were having. The problem faced related to getting as many bikes into a standard (and re-purposed) shipping container. A standard bike rack would leave too much space between the bikes and fill up the available space very quickly, as well as making it difficult to access the bikes quickly.

The idea of ceiling mounted hooks allowed the bikes to be hung and reducing the footprint of the bikes. The adaption of that idea to sliding the bikes permitted further compaction and storage capability within the same volume.

The Industro product range was chosen for this task. While there were many other systems were available, the cost versus load capability were a standout and the robust form of the four wheel rollers will ensure a very long working life. The specific roller chosen was the OM51500 four wheel roller with an M16 bolt fixing. This style allowed a simple bracket to be fixed to the roller that bikes will be hung from.

Industrial sliding door rollers solve a bicycle storage problem. | Elraco

While this wasn’t the intended function of this product range, it was great to see a clever bit of lateral thinking to solve a problem using the Industro Rollers. It begs a question of what else these can be used for.