Motorized Drawer Storage Rack: 5-Ton Capacity for Steel & Aluminum Sheets

Metal fabrication shops and service centers pay for floor space twice: once in rent, and again in lost productivity when stacked sheet inventory hides the plate an operator needs. Piling steel and aluminum sheets on pallets buries material, scratches soft surfaces, and turns a five-minute retrieval into a half-hour hunt. Herochu motorized drawer storage racks replace those piles with full-extension drawers, each rated up to 5,000 kg, so every sheet stays flat, labeled, and within reach. The rack turns wasted aisle area into vertical storage and lets one person pull any plate without disturbing the rest of the stock.

Full-Extension Drawers, Motorized Roll-Out

The working core of the system is a drawer that rolls out of the rack on heavy-duty rollers. In the motorized version, a single button moves even a fully loaded tray out to the aisle; there is no manual cranking, no tugging, and no reaching inside the frame. A mechanical-assistance discharge option covers plants that prefer a controlled manual pull, and both variants keep the same drawer geometry, so a shop can mix electric and manual racks without changing its layout.

Because the drawer carries the load, the forklift or overhead crane works only at the front face of the rack. Operators stand in the aisle, check the sheet, and hand it straight to the waiting forks or hook. Herochu fits each rack with a safety interlock system that stops drawer travel during lifting and prevents a second drawer from extending while one is already out, which keeps high-capacity handling predictable even when several people work the same rack.

Installation follows a simple rule: a level, load-bearing floor and a clear lane in front of the rack. The columns bolt together, the drawers run on roller tracks with replaceable wheels, and the base is anchored to the floor, so a new rack can be commissioned in a single shift. Herochu supplies the assembly drawings and on-site guidance, and the same footprint can be extended later by adding a second unit beside the first.

Load Ratings That Match Real Production

Capacity is not a marketing number on this rack; it is engineered into the frame and documented per model. The standard range covers sheet sizes from 2,500 × 1,300 mm up to 6,000 × 2,000 mm:

Clear space between levels is 120 mm as standard and can be adjusted to suit thicker plate stacks. Every model shares the same backbone: Q235B high-strength steel columns and a dual-beam crossbeam that spreads each drawer’s load across the whole frame. With 3,000 to 5,000 kg per tier and up to 30,000 kg total per rack, the structure remains rigid under full load, and the thickened steel resists corrosion and deformation through years of warehouse service. The 5-ton drawer models, HC-B4020-65 and HC-B6020-65, are the ones most often specified for large-format steel and aluminum plate in cutting and forming departments.

Two Materials, One Careful Design

Steel plate is heavy; aluminum is soft. A storage system that handles both has to be rigid where the load demands and gentle where the surface demands. Herochu solves this by placing every sheet flat and independently on its own drawer, with plastic support strips under the plate. The supports prevent the sheet from sliding during drawer travel and keep sensitive surfaces away from bare steel edges, so aluminum sheet leaves the rack without the scratches and dents that come from stacking pressure and friction. Flat storage also removes the warping that appears when plate is leaned against a wall or balanced on a pallet, which matters for shops feeding laser, plasma, and punch lines that need a clean, true sheet.

The tray layout also allows mixed storage without mixed handling. A single Herochu rack can hold hot-rolled steel in one bank and mill-finished aluminum in another, with each drawer tagged by grade and thickness. Operators read the label at the aisle, pull the correct drawer, and never touch material they do not need.

Storage That Costs Less to Operate

The vertical layered design uses the workshop’s three-dimensional space instead of spreading material across the floor. Aisle occupation drops by 30 to 70 percent compared with pallet storage, and because drawers roll out to the aisle, forklifts and overhead cranes never enter the interior of the rack; they operate through standard-width aisles and pick the exposed sheet directly. Field use typically cuts retrieval time by up to 70 percent, and the classification layout supports first-in, first-out rotation, so older stock moves out before it rusts or becomes obsolete. Inventory turnover improves, stockpiling shrinks, and material preparation time falls because the right sheet is already visible, labeled, and at hand. A single operator can complete a storage or retrieval cycle that previously required two people and a forklift shuffle.

Verified Build, Long Service Life

Herochu drawer racks are manufactured under CE and ISO 9001 certification, and the drawer count (3 to 8), shelf height, and overall dimensions are all adjustable at the order stage. That flexibility, combined with the motorized roll-out and the 5-ton per-level rating, is why the series shows up in laser cutting workshops, metal service centers, and aluminum processing plants where sheet inventory is measured in hundreds of tons. For shops that want the retrieval speed without rethinking their material flow, the motorized drawer storage rack delivers the density of a tower with the simplicity of a drawer.

Herochu has delivered this series to sheet metal workshops, elevator manufacturers, and stainless steel processors in Europe, the Americas, and Southeast Asia, and each order ships with the load test record for the configured drawer rating.

Contact Herochu for a configuration matched to your sheet sizes, load weights, and available floor plan.