Wesco Pushboy Bin Astromech Trolley

Founded in 1867, Wesco have been making products for over 140 years. There is no denying their designs are iconic. After a recent purchase of a red Wesco 50 litre Pushboy bin, which is located in front of a pantry door, it became obvious that it's two part design made it awkward to move out of the way.

Whilst there is a trolley available for the PushBoy, plus other models in Wesco's range, I did not find it particularly attractive, not forgetting the additional £50.00 cost to an already very expensive bin!

I decided to design a trolley which would be (1) Practical, (2)attractive and (3) have a stable footprint. The design should take into account as you fill the 50 litre capacity the centre of gravity rises, as does the tipping point
when rolled across any resistive floor surface, such as carpet etc. After a few experiments I settled on the style and dimensions.

The Design:

I tried to keep the style true to the Pushboys commercial roots using an outrigger design, thus allowing the industrial casters to rotate outside of the diameter of the base, whilst also providing a bumper. The outrigger design also stops the bins main body from contacting any surface such as walls.

Considerations:

The picture below shows the a best and worse case scenario of how the casters may align in use, whether rolling or rested.

You will also notice between the two examples above, a substantial difference of 100mm at the casters midpoint  (shown by the light blue line) , yet it mostly stays within the 400mm envelope of the bins footprint.

The Interlock, three become one:

The Wesco Pushboy consists of two main parts, the main steel outer shell plus a galvanised steel inner bin.




To lock the two parts to the trolley base, a groove was added for the inner bin plus, a rebate for the outer shell, now all three parts become one and cannot separate from the trolley base when in motion.

The Pushboy has its own individual charm! When the PushBoy, trolley and motion, all come together I can't help but see a resemblance to R2D2, or should I say R2B2 as it is know fondly known...

The Prototype:

Here, you can clearly see the interlocking rings made with my home-made router circle cutting jig (shown here in the DellCade arcade machine build).

When assembled and locked together the Astromech trolley base fits perfectly with the Pushboy base.

Three become one...

The Astromech trolley also adds an addition 130mm of welcome height to the bin, bringing it just shy of the 900mm worktop height.

Fact'Dr'oid:

Technically speaking...  if I were to vinyl wrap a red Pushboy (shown in the 3D render) as one of the R2 series of Star Wars Astromech Droids, it would be an R2-M5.