Herochu Heavy-Duty Sheet Metal Storage Systems
Start at USD 3,660, leave with CE, EU and ISO 9001 paperwork in hand, and watch the empty air above your floor turn into profitable cube. Herochu towers are built for fabrication shops that burn, bend or blast plate every day and cannot justify paying rent on cubic metres they never use.
Stop paying for sky you do not occupy
A 2 000 ft² zone buried under five-foot piles uses only 19 % of the volume you lease. At the national average of 1.10persquarefoot,thatwasted42000ft3costsroughly 19 000 every year—enough to buy two fibre-laser nozzles or fund a welder’s annual wage. Herochu’s vertical cassette system recovers that air and places it under your control, cutting the real estate cost per tonne of sheet metal by up to 74 %.
Designed around the plate, not around the forklift
Traditional A-frame racks force the truck to drive in, turn and tilt. The moment the forks rise, the sheet swings like a pendulum and the operator backs out blind. Herochu stores plates on edge in individual cassettes. A push-button call sends the selected cassette down to a horizontal loading angle in 14 seconds. The crane magnet or vacuum lifter meets the sheet at waist height, pulls it straight out and returns it without wheel marks, edge dents or oil-can distortion. One fork truck, one operator, zero drama.
Capacities that match the press-brake diet
HC-4030 – 4 t per cassette, 3 050 mm stacking height, accepts 1 500 × 3 000 mm plates.
HC-5040 – 5 t per cassette, 4 060 mm stacking height, accepts 2 000 × 4 000 mm plates.
HC-6050 – 6 t per cassette, 5 080 mm stacking height, accepts 2 500 × 6 000 mm plates.
HC-8060 – 8 t per cassette, 6 100 mm stacking height, accepts 3 000 × 8 000 mm plates.
Need 12 mm gauge cassettes for titanium? A nickel-plated frame for clean-room work? Send the material data; we will quote a special metallurgy and surface finish within 24 hours.
Steel that stays straight
The mast columns are laser-cut from 8 mm Q355B, then welded into a closed box section with continuous 6 mm corner welds. After shot-blasting to Sa 2.5, the frame receives a zinc-rich primer and 80 µm polyester top coat. The calculated deflection under full load is L/450—half the allowable limit of L/225 specified by EN 1993-1-1. Translation: a 6 m tower loaded to 40 t will sway less than 13 mm at the summit, keeping the crane magnet aligned with the sheet.
Manual today, automated tomorrow
Begin with the crank handle. When volume justifies automation, bolt on the 0.75 kW gear motor, clip in the encoder and plug the CAN-bus cable into the existing PLC. No new rack, no welding, no re-certification. The same cassette that accepted hand power accepts servo power without leaving the building.
Safety engineered, not added
Each cassette locks in two planes: a gravity latch grips when the unit is vertical, and a secondary pin engages when the operator calls for horizontal tilt. Photocells across the aisle disable all movement if the light curtain is broken. Optional laser scanners create a 2 m safety zone; step inside and the drive coasts to a smooth stop. A Dutch shipyard reported zero lost-time injuries in 38 months after replacing floor bundles with HC-6050 towers.
Floor space mathematics that finance understands
A Midwest OEM stored 310 t of 4 × 2 m plate on sixteen floor pallets occupying 576 m². Two HC-6050 towers now hold the same inventory in 29 m². The 547 m² surplus was converted into a third laser-cutting cell, raising monthly throughput by 18 % without expanding the building. The towers paid for themselves in 10.7 months, verified by an independent accountant.
Delivery that respects production
Frames ship fully welded; cassettes and drive units are palletised for container loading. A two-tower, eight-cassette configuration fits inside one 40 HC container. Two technicians, one 5 t overhead crane and a torque wrench are enough to anchor 40 t of capacity in a single shift. Load tests and CE conformity documents are signed off before the crew leaves the site.
Spare parts for decades
Bearings, drive belts, hand-wheels, laser sensors and PLC firmware are kept in stock at Houston, Duisburg and Dubai. Order before 14:00 local time and the part ships the same day. Every tower built since 2010 still accepts today’s components; we retire part numbers only when the last installed unit reaches its 25-year design life.
Start recovering the cube you already pay for
Email the largest sheet size, the heaviest single plate and the number of tonnes you keep in the hall. You will receive a 3-D layout, a static calculation, a duty-cycle energy estimate and a fixed price delivered to your dock. Stop renting air; put your metal in a Herochu heavy-duty sheet metal storage system and let the machines earn their keep.
