A fabrication shop processing 3,000 by 1,500 millimeter mild steel sheets typically dedicates an entire bay to raw material. That bay holds forty to sixty tons of plate across a few floor-level stacks. Retrieving a specific gauge means moving whatever sits on top, often with a forklift, a spotter, and fifteen minutes of non-value-added time. Meanwhile the laser cutter sits idle.
Herochu builds the Multi-Tower Automatic Plate Vertical Storage Warehouse to eliminate that trade-off. The system stacks plates vertically inside tall tower frames, using overhead airspace that flat storage cannot touch. A configuration with four towers and ten levels per tower stores the same tonnage that would otherwise consume three times the floor area.
The economics go beyond real estate. Floor stacking hides inventory in plain sight. A shop knows it has “some 6 millimeter” but not exactly how much, which heat lot it belongs to, or where it sits in the stack. Herochu’s automated tower storage tracks every plate’s dimensions, weight, and quantity in real time. The PLC touchscreen shows available slots, occupied positions, and total tower load without a clipboard or a walk to the rack.
Retrieval becomes a one-touch operation. The operator selects a material ID. The shuttle locates the plate, extracts it from its layer, and delivers it to the material cart. Transfer speeds range from 5 to 15 meters per minute with positioning repeatability of ±2 millimeters. That accuracy lets the tower feed a laser cutter or press brake loading station directly, without manual repositioning.
The space saving compounds. A Herochu HC-S4020-4-105, configured with four towers and ten layers, handles 4,000 by 2,000 millimeter sheets at 5,000 kilograms per level. One system replaces multiple floor stacks, the forklift traffic between them, and the aisle space those stacks require. The freed floor area can hold another press brake, a welding cell, or a finished-goods staging zone.
For shops running high-mix, low-volume work, the classification capability matters as much as the density. Different material grades, thicknesses, and dimensions can be assigned to specific towers or tower sections. A 304 stainless job does not require moving a stack of hot-rolled mild steel to reach the right plate. The system already knows where everything sits.
The Multi-Tower Automatic Plate Vertical Storage Warehouse also changes how labor is deployed. Manual retrieval consumes operator time and introduces handling damage. Automated picking with a material cart eliminates the edge dings and surface scratches that come from sliding plates off a stack. Two operators who previously spent their shifts moving steel can be reassigned to machine tending or inspection.
For a fabrication business evaluating automation, the calculation often starts with floor space. It rarely ends there. The larger gain comes from turning raw material storage into a managed, digital, dispatch-ready hub. Herochu builds that hub as a modular system, configurable from two to four towers, six to twelve layers, with plate capacity up to 6,000 by 2,000 millimeters. The footprint shrinks. The throughput rises. The inventory becomes visible.
