[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.

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