Herochu Heavy-Duty Manual Horizontal Sheet Metal Storage Rack
Custom-Built for Your Workshop, Starting at USD 3,698 – CE, EU, ISO 9001 Certified
When every square metre of floor space carries a premium and every minute of machine uptime is billed to the cent, storage is no longer a back-room concern—it is a front-line profit centre. The Herochu Heavy-Duty Manual Horizontal Sheet Metal Storage Rack is engineered for fabricators who refuse to let inventory bottlenecks dictate throughput. From 0.5 mm aluminium skins to 25 mm hot-rolled plate, this roll-out system turns chaotic stacks into a gravity-controlled, single-operator workflow that is measurable in seconds, not shifts.
1. Purpose-Built for Sheet Metal Reality
Traditional cantilever or A-frame racks force operators to hunt, lift, and man-handle individual sheets. Herochu replaces that choreography with a telescopic drawer that glides out 100 % on sealed bearings rated for 1 200 kg per level. The moment the handle is pulled, the entire drawer platform descends 3° by cam design, creating a natural brake that prevents unintended roll-back even when loaded eccentrically. No pneumatic assist, no electric actuator—just pure mechanical advantage that works when the power drops out.
Each drawer is punched on 50 mm centres for divider relocation, letting you segregate mixed alloys, thicknesses, or customer-owned stock without zip-ties or homemade stops. Divider height ranges from 100 mm to 400 mm and is laser-marked with metric and imperial scales so operators can confirm gauge at a glance. A brushed 430 stainless overlay on the leading edge eliminates the “magnet test” confusion between mild steel and 300-series blanks.
2. Density Without Compromise
A standard 3 100 mm wide × 2 400 mm high bay delivers 24 000 kg of storage within a 1.3 m² footprint—equal to 240 m² of traditional floor stacking at 100 kg/m². Clearance between drawers is adjustable from 110 mm to 320 mm, allowing the same upright to accept both 48” × 96” master sheets and narrow drop-offs left from previous laser jobs. If your product mix changes next quarter, loosen four M12 bolts and re-slot the supports; no cutting, no welding, no epoxy paint touch-up.
Height extensions bolt on without dismantling the lower levels, so you can grow from three tiers to nine while the rack remains loaded. That modular DNA protects your original capital: every component—upright, spine beam, drawer chassis, or handle—carries a standalone part number and is kept in stock at our Eindhoven logistics hub for 72-hour dispatch anywhere inside the EU.
3. Safety Engineered, Not Added Later
Sheet metal injuries rarely make headlines, yet lacerations and crush incidents remain the second-most reported lost-time accident in European fab shops. Herochu tackles the risk at four independent points:
- Positive-stop dampers absorb kinetic energy during the last 80 mm of drawer travel, eliminating the metallic crash that causes edge burrs to fly.
- Auto-latch pawls engage when the drawer passes 200 mm extension; a foot pedal releases the mechanism so the operator has both hands free for slings or suction cups.
- Side-shoulder rub rails keep the top edge of the sheet 15 mm inside the drawer envelope, preventing “edge creep” when forklifts drive past.
- Powder-coated signal yellow on all moving parts provides high visual contrast against grey steel inventory, reducing struck-by incidents during night shifts.
The system meets CE Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC and is supplied with a UKCA-conformity dossier for Northern Ireland projects. An optional laser-scan presence beacon can be retro-fitted to lock drawer motion if the sensing field is breached—ideal for robotic tending cells where cobots and humans share the same aisle.
4. Manual Today, Automated Tomorrow
Start with a fully manual rack and add automation modules as volume grows. Herochu’s patented T-slot spine accepts a servo-driven shuttle that can push or pull a drawer in 4.3 seconds—30 % faster than twin-chain competitors—while drawing only 0.9 kW at peak. The shuttle’s absolute-value encoder remembers every drawer position even after an emergency stop, so there is no homing routine on restart. A CANopen bus feeds positional data directly to your existing MES; no proprietary black box, no annual software licence.
If full automation is still two capital-budget cycles away, plug in our semi-auto assist package: a 24 VDC geared motor mounts beneath the bottom drawer and couples to a concealed rack-and-pinion. Operators push a pendant button to load or unload, cutting manual pull force from 45 kg to 7 kg. When the budget is approved, the same motor becomes the slave axis for the fully automatic shuttle—zero redundant spend, zero tear-out.
5. Customisation That Starts on the Drawing Board
Every Herochu rack begins life as a 3D STEP file in your factory layout. Our applications engineers factor aisle width, crane hook height, forklift mast offset, and even the refractive index of your laser enclosure windows to ensure drawers can open without fouling existing equipment. Choose from:
- Galvanised (Z275) finish for humidity-controlled plants.
- Two-part epoxy zinc phosphate for coastal or aerospace caustic wash-down zones.
- Stainless 316L upgrade for white-room food-service panels or titanium medical blanks.
Drawer bottoms can be supplied with HDPE glide strips for non-marring contact with polished aluminium, or with hardened steel inserts for 500 HB wear plate that would otherwise chew through soft substrates. Need ATEX compliance for paint-line upstream storage? We fit copper-graphite bushes and earth straps that keep surface resistance below 10 Ω.
6. ROI You Can Present to the Board
A mid-size subcontractor in Stuttgart retrofitted six Herochu bays in Q1-2024. Before: two operators spent 38 combined minutes per shift locating and extracting material; 4 % of sheets arrived at the laser scratched or dented, triggering reject tags. After: single-operator retrieval averages 4 minutes; surface defect rate dropped to 0.3 %. At €78/hour labour and €1.20/kg material, payback arrived in 7.4 months—well inside the 24-month threshold demanded by their private-equity owner.
The numbers scale linearly. Whether you run a 3-man job shop or a 24-hour lights-out facility, Herochu racks convert wasted motion into billable laser minutes. At full utilisation, each bay frees 28 m² of floor space—enough real estate to install a second fibre laser or a 6-kW deburring cell without extending the lease.
7. Logistics & Peace-of-Mind
Price includes delivery to your kerb in a shrink-wrapped steel stillage. A multilingual assembly crew can be on-site within five working days anywhere inside the EU; outside Europe, we partner with Kuehne+Nagel for DDP incoterms. Every bolt, bearing, and damper is laser-etched with a QR code that links to a 3D exploded view and a current stock level—no more waiting six weeks for a custom shoulder screw.
Warranty: 10 years on structural members, 5 years on bearings and dampers, 2 years on optional automation components. All spare parts are stocked under one roof; if a drawer slide fails at 18:30 on a Friday, we ship the replacement before 20:00 so your Monday shift starts on time.
8. Next Step
Send us your worst-case sheet mix—length, width, thickness, weight, and daily retrieval frequency. Within 24 hours you will receive a PDF proposal that includes footprint, load plan, cycle-time analysis, and a locked price valid for 90 days. If the numbers work, we will CNC-cut your first upright the same week and slot your order ahead of serial production. Herochu does not believe in queue jumping—only in delivering measurable advantage faster than your competitors can update their quotes.
Store more, handle less, earn sooner. Choose Herochu Heavy-Duty Manual Horizontal Sheet Metal Storage Rack and turn the cost centre you tolerate into the profit driver you celebrate.
