Effortless Steel Plate Handling: How the Herochu Manual 8-Ton Rack Boosts Workshop Efficiency Without Robots, Forklift Ballet, or a Seven-Figure Budget
Google “steel plate storage ideas” and you’ll see the same tired photos: leaning towers of sheet metal, operators in hard hats pointing at clipboards, and yellow forklifts pirouetting like they’re auditioning for Swan Lake. Herochu does the opposite. We built a hand-cranked, 8-ton-per-layer drawer rack that lets one person—yes, one—slide out a 6 m × 2 m plate in under 30 seconds, no forklift, no crane, no three-person shuffle. If your laser, plasma or punch press has ever stood idle while somebody hunts for “the 4 mm 316L that was definitely here yesterday,” keep reading. This page explains why 1,200+ shops on four continents replaced their stacks (and their stress) with a Herochu HC-B series rack, why the payback averages 7.4 months, and how you can customize a CE/UE/ISO 9001-certified system for less than the cost of a second-hand telehandler.
Stacked sheet metal behaves like a deck of cards made of lead—pull the wrong one and the whole pile shifts, scratches or slams to the floor. Herochu’s drawer rack turns that deck into a filing cabinet. Each shelf is a full-extension, galvanized-steel drawer riding on sealed bearings rated for 8 t dynamic load. A 1:65 planetary hand-crank gives you 65 Nm of mechanical advantage; your pinky finger generates more torque than a 3 t forklift trying to pry the bottom sheet from a stack. Result: 100 % selectivity, zero sheet-to-sheet contact, and access times that drop from 45 minutes to 45 seconds. Your beam-on time climbs, your overtime bill falls.
Choose the footprint that matches your stock and your floor space. The HC-B3015-63 swallows 3000 × 1500 mm sheets, the HC-B4015-63 takes 4000 × 1500 mm, the HC-B4020-65 handles 4000 × 2000 mm, and the flagship HC-B6020-65 stores 6000 × 2000 mm plates. Every model ships with six layers as standard, each drawer carrying 8 t yet moving like a kitchen slide-out. All frames are bolted, not welded, so you can add or remove levels as your mix changes. A 600 mm vertical pitch accepts anything from 0.5 mm shim stock to 40 mm armor plate. Need nine layers? We’ll ship two extra uprights. Switching from 2 m to 1.5 m sheets? Move the divider pins and you’re done—no cutting torch, no downtime.
Safety is engineered into the gear ratio, not bolted on afterwards. Every crank handle includes a spring-loaded anti-reverse pawl. If an operator lets go mid-cycle, the drawer locks instantly—no drop, no crushed toes. Edge guards and 125 mm high side rails stop sheets from skateboarding onto someone’s boots. The entire structure is FEM-analyzed for 2.5× safety factor and proof-loaded to 1.2 × rated capacity in our Shanghai test bay. CE machinery directive 2006/42/EC? Passed. UE declaration? Ships with every rack. ISO 9001:2015? Our cert number is 02121-QMS-001—Google it.
Still love the hand-crank but running three shifts? Swap four bolts and the crank becomes a 24 V DC servo motor. Push-button retrieval, 120 mm/s travel speed, photoelectric light curtains and an automatic brake. The retrofit kit bolts onto any existing Herochu frame, so you don’t scrap your first investment when orders double.
Midwest Precision Fab in Columbus, OH, cut 2.3 hours of daily “stack shuffling” after installing two HC-B4020-65 racks. At $180/hr laser burn rate, that’s $414 saved per day. Add $9,200/year in avoided fork-lease payments and $1,100 in scratched-sheet write-offs, and the $7,320 rack pair paid for itself in 7.1 months. They used the cash to buy a 6 kW fiber laser—paid in full, no finance charges. “We didn’t buy storage,” says owner John Kowalski, “we bought time on our machines.”
A traditional 6-high stack of 6 m × 2 m × 10 mm plate needs 12 m² and a 4 m aisle on three sides—total 36 m². The Herochu HC-B6020-65 needs 6.4 m² and one 1.2 m aisle. At $65/m² industrial rent in the Midwest, that 29 m² delta saves $1,885/year—every year—for a rack that costs $4,290. In year five you’re literally storing steel for free.
Powder-coated RAL 5010 gentian blue is standard, but we’ll spray corporate orange, Deere green or Ferrari red for $0. Need 10 t per drawer? We swap in 40Cr seamless rollers and bump the rail to 55 mm—no engineering surcharge if you order two or more. Want laser-written part numbers on each drawer face? Done. Integrated weighing cells with RS485 output to your MES? Add $320 per shelf. Starting price remains $3,660 because customization is our norm, not a luxury.
Racks ship knock-down in export-grade plywood crates, 1.2 m × 0.8 m × 0.6 m per bay—small enough to fit through a standard man door. An M16 socket wrench, a 4 mm hex key and a rubber mallet are the only tools required. Two technicians can assemble a 6-layer HC-B4020-65 in 90 minutes; we time-stamp every build video and upload it to your Dropbox before invoicing. Prefer turnkey? Our flying crew can be on your floor 72 hours after the PO anywhere in the continental US or EU.
Herochu—effortless steel plate handling, starting at $3,660, delivered faster than your next rush job.
