Scooter Wheels Keep DIY Barn Doors On Track

[MotoGeeking] built a giant spray booth and is in the process of making customized, air-filtering barn doors for it. When it came to buy hardware to move the doors, though, he found all the ready-made options to be prohibitively expensive. You know what comes next: he designed barn door hardware from the ground up, and did it as cheaply as possible.

After intensely studying many images of barn doors and hardware, [MotoGeeking] decided on the right wheels and went from there. Kick scooter wheels fit the bill nicely, since they are designed to support a lot of weight and come with their own bearings and spacers. And they’re cheap, too — just $9 for a pair.

[MotoGeeking] found some C channel extruded aluminium that seemed to be a perfect match for the wheels, but the wheel was quick to bind whenever it touched the sides. He solved that one by epoxying a length of round bar into the bottom corners. This allows the wheel to move freely while forcing it to stay centered in the track.

In designing the 1/4″ aluminium brackets, [MotoGeeking] took a measure thrice, order once approach to selecting the fasteners. You probably know by now that McMaster-Carr has free CAD drawings for every little thing. [MotoGeeking] imported the ones he liked into Illustrator and built around them. This helped him get it right the first time and kept the headaches and hair-tearing away. Watch the giant door skeleton glide effortlessly on its track after the break.

6 thoughts on “Scooter Wheels Keep DIY Barn Doors On Track

  1. Looking good, but gotta say i was a little disappointed, i expected a door on scooter wheels, as in, the kind of scooters you see/have on highschool, not the ones from kindergarden.
    Still, thats a nice sliding door.

  2. When creating such large spray booth, put thoughts into mitigating the risks of potentially hazardous (explosive) atmosphere e.g. paint vapors. Regular equipment might have hot surfaces or create sparks that can cause an explosion.

  3. @TPeter, You are absolutely correct. However, this booth is specifically for spray a stucco type texture that is not at all flammable. It does have an exhaust though. We use a separate spray booth that has a full fire suppression system and exhaust for spraying anything that may be flammable.

  4. Nice design. In the past I have scavenged old tracks and wheels from barn doors and have a small stash of them, but if I ever have a need for something that I don’t have the pieces on hand to do, I will remember this. I would probably put wheels on the bottom of the door as well.

    I have one sliding glass door that the track is beyond bad on. I have been pondering getting a lot of little N52 neodymium magnets and making a mag lev door slide. Sadly, I think a new door and track would be less expensive, but a lot less fun.

  5. Over here the wheels would be a negligible part of the cost and you could buy task-specific ones. It’s the aluminium that would run up the bill, and run it up good.

    Still, for the right area and as a self-made thing it’s pretty damn good

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