Vertical storage racks for sheet metal – Herochu roll-out tower system from USD 5,120, CE/ISO certified, engineered for off-cuts, partial sheets and laser remnants that usually finish their life on the floor.
Every workshop owns two inventories: the one in the computer, neat and accounted for, and the one under the bench, bent, scratched and never quite found when the next night-shift nest demands it. Herochu’s vertical storage racks for sheet metal erase the second inventory by giving every rectangle—full sheet, quarter sheet, skeleton or odd-shaped blank—a vertical address that one operator can reach in under six seconds. The tower stands only 1,270 mm deep, slim enough to bolt against the back of a laser, punch or panel bender, yet inside fifteen roll-out drawers it swallows the equivalent of twenty traditional stillages, releasing up to 28 m² of floor for value-adding machines.
Start with the drawer, the heart of the system. Each cradle is a 3° inclined plane fabricated from 4 mm Q355B plate, laser-cut and brake-pressed to create a 40 mm return lip that stops 0.5 mm stainless from sliding forward when the unit is opened. Eight sealed bearings—four radial and four thrust—ride on hardened rails so the pull force stays below 35 N even when the drawer carries 700 kg of copper-busbar off-cuts. A spring-loaded detent clicks at full extension, signalling the crane driver that the unit is locked and safe for loading. Push the detent again and the cradle glides home with the gentle clack of precision, not the clang of loose steel.
The rack frame is welded from 160 × 80 × 6 mm RHS, moment-connected at every joint to create a torsion box that will not rack when fifteen drawers are open simultaneously. Baseplates are 16 mm thick, slotted for M20 chemical anchors and ribbed to spread the 10.5 t point load into a standard 200 mm reinforced slab. Uprights are stitch-welded every 100 mm to eliminate oil-canning, then shot-blasted to SA 2.5 and finished with 80 µm orange epoxy-polyester, RAL 2004, the high-visibility colour specified by Audi and BMW for internal plant equipment. If your safety team prefers blue, or you need hot-dip galvanising for a coastal battery plant, the change is made before the steel leaves our 16,000 m² Jinan facility, not in a drafty yard on site.
Capacity is quoted the way engineers understand it: 700 kg per drawer, 10,500 kg per fifteen-drawer tower, 1.5 safety factor on yield at full extension. Eight standard footprints cover every common sheet size: 6′ × 4′, 8′ × 4′, 10′ × 4′, 12′ × 4′, 6′ × 5′, 8′ × 5′, 10′ × 5′ and 12′ × 5′. Drawer height is 220 mm centre-to-centre, but the modular spline column allows 180 mm, 280 mm or 330 mm pitch if your remnants include formed flanges or 3D brackets. Towers can be placed back-to-back on a shared base to create a 30-drawer island, or butted against a wall for single-sided access. A 50 mm plinth is optional to clear uneven epoxy or sloping drainage channels.
The human interface is deliberately minimal. No touch-screen, no passwords, no weekly software update. A glance down the aisle tells the operator which drawer holds 2 mm mild-steel: the colour-coded label pocket screwed to the front beam. If he needs 1.2 mm mirror stainless, the green label and the protective PVC sleeve inside the cradle confirm the choice before the hoist moves. Cycle time studies carried out at a Tier-1 automotive stamper showed average retrieval dropped from 4.5 min (floor stack) to 38 s (Herochu vertical), freeing 2.7 labour hours per shift and allowing the laser to run two extra nests every night.
Safety is engineered, not laminated later. The 3° backward tilt keeps sheets against the rear stop even when a drawer is hammered closed in a hurry. Each cradle is supplied with two removable dividing pins so mixed remnants cannot slide sideways and trap fingers. Wire-mesh backing is available if you store near pedestrian gangways; the 50 × 50 × 4 mm grid stops a 1 m × 2 m sheet from toppling through while preserving visibility for plant fire regulations. Removable holding arms bolt to the top beam to support floppy aluminium composite panels that otherwise sag like wet cardboard. If you cut copper or brass, specify the conductive rubber mat kit to prevent galvanic staining when dissimilar metals touch.
Installation follows a Saturday timetable. The tower ships knock-down: drawers stacked on pallets, frames bolted into lift-able modules, hardware bagged and tagged. Two technicians and a 3 t fork-truck can assemble a fifteen-drawer unit in four hours, including anchor setting with Hilti HIT-HY 200 adhesive. No on-site welding, no hot-work permit, no burn-through risk on your new epoxy floor. A laser level and a 19 mm torque wrench are the only special tools required; both are supplied in the ship-with kit. Once the last bolt is tightened to 340 Nm, the installers insert the safety pin, load the first 700 kg drawer and sign the hand-over certificate that activates the five-year structural warranty.
Maintenance is limited to a thirty-second visual check: are the bearings free of swarf, is the detent spring positive, are the anchor nuts still painted with the witness mark? Beyond that, the sealed bearings are filled for life with lithium complex grease rated −30 °C to +120 °C. Drawer fronts are coated with anti-fingerprint clear lacquer so aluminium dust wipes off with a dry cloth, no solvents needed. Should a rail ever be damaged by a crane hook, the bolt-on design allows replacement in minutes without unloading the remaining drawers.
Industries already using Herochu vertical storage racks for sheet metal include:
- Laser job shops storing 1 mm to 25 mm mild-steel and stainless remnants for repeat automotive fixtures
- HVAC contractors segregating galvanised duct blanks by diameter and insulation thickness
- Architectural metal-workers protecting brushed #4 finish sheets from forklift tyre scratches
- Aerospace tool-rooms isolating titanium and aluminium-lithium plate by heat number and batch
- Ship-repair yards positioning 5 mm chequer plate close to plasma tables inside dock walls
- Distribution centres feeding same-day cut-to-size programmes for 200 SKU cladding contractors
Each tower arrives with a QR code linking to a cloud folder: DXF outline for floor layout, STEP model for interference checking, spare parts list with current price and local distributor stock, and a two-minute time-lapse showing assembly from crates to full load. If your facility manager wants to run a seismic or FEM report for insurance, the file package already contains reaction forces and anchor pull-out values calculated to EN 1993-1-1 and AS 4100.
Price is published, not hidden behind a sales rep. A fifteen-drawer, 8′ × 4′ tower, manual operation, orange paint, ex-works Qingdao is USD 5,120. Add 8 % for hot-dip galvanising, USD 290 for wire-mesh backing, USD 110 per removable dividing pin set. Container-load quantities of ten or more qualify for a 5 % discount and free installation supervision anywhere within 50 km of a capital city port. Lead time is fifteen days for standard models, twenty-two days for custom pitch or colour.
