I hate using skates on smaller machine, seen both a lathe and mill topple (each in 3 skates). At home I move knee mills and grinders with a pallet jack. Most lathes I like using a pallet jack on one end and a skate on the other. I use pipe if the machine is too heavy for a pallet jack. With a pinch bar, some shims, pipe, and a sledge to turn the pipes, there is little you can’t move.
I think skates VS rollers isn't usually a win for rollers.
skates do fine under lighter machines if you employ them correctly. Rolling on roundbar is fine if you can wind all the jacking screws up. But, by the time you do that I'd already have it on skates and the move would be over. Roundbar doesn't make turns so well either. Not like skates anyway.
I cut up a handful of sticks of 9/16" CRS into 3ft pieces for a rigging job I did years ago. I've used them a few times and machines roll very easily on them. You don't need 1" round or pipe to roll a machine.
I spose it's easy to say you don't like using skates under a littler machine and would prefer something else like bars, but having done many hundreds of moves using every kind of rigging equipment I don't think bars have any advantage over skates.
If you tip a machine on skates you're doing something wrong. Plain and simple. Most people don't do this stuff every day so take your time, think it through and if it doesn't roll easy or a skate is wiggly stop and figure out what's wrong before you wreck stuff.
There's some real easy, dirt simple tricks to setting your skates right under a machine.
On a manual lathe, Jack the headstock end first. Set your jack where it lifts the entire headstock end evenly- The fore-aft center of mass is here. Set two skates under that end. Jack tailstock end. Now set single skate under tailstock end near that fore-aft center of mass position where you balanced the lathe on the jack. If the center of mass was near the extreme front or rear of the lathe, then you need to shift the tailstock skate that direction an appropriate amount so the 3rd skate shares the load. Takes a tiny bit of thought to do this. You can't jack where the skate goes. Do it like this and you can't drop a machine by accident. You'd have to try.
