Roll-Out Vertical Sheet Metal Storage Rack for Remnants and Offcuts

What Should You Measure Before Buying?

Most enquiries start with a sheet size and stop there. Four measurements decide whether the unit works on the floor.

The largest remnant you actually keep. Not the biggest sheet the shop can process, but the biggest piece that survives the scrap decision. A shop cutting 3,000 × 1,500 mm sheets may only keep drops to 2,500 mm, and a 3,000 mm rack buys footprint nobody uses.

The heaviest single piece. Multiply area by thickness by 7,850 kg per cubic metre for steel. A 3,000 × 1,500 mm sheet at 20 mm is 4.5 m² × 0.02 m × 7,850, or roughly 707 kg. That figure rules a standard drawer in or out.

The number of material families. Count material and thickness combinations, not pieces on the floor.

The aisle in front. A tray needs roughly its own length in free floor to slide out, plus standing room, so a 1,500 mm tray wants about 1,500 mm of clear aisle.

How Does the Pull-Out Design Change Access?

Flat plate racks store by weight. Every retrieval means moving what sits above the piece you want, and the taller the pile, the fewer times anyone bothers. Pigeonhole racks fix visibility but often fail on extraction: a sheet wedged into a compartment still has to be dragged out by its edge.

The roll-out design separates the two jobs. The tray carries the load and the rail carries the tray. Pull, and the face of the material is in front of you at working height; push, and the aisle is clear. Nothing has to be lifted to see what is stored. Herochu builds the drawer with mechanical assistance so a tray at its rated load still moves under control, including the return stroke.

Which Storage Method Suits Which Shop?

The vertical format also suits work in progress, not just scrap. Cut parts waiting for bending, nested blanks for a second operation and semi-finished assemblies store the same way, which is often where the return comes from rather than from the offcuts.

What Do the Standard Models Cover?

Beyond the standard build, tier count runs from 10 to 15 layers, per-layer load from 100 kg to 1,000 kg, and heavier drawer configurations are quoted to 2,000 kg. Outer dimensions, clear space and color are customized, so an awkward bay or a non-standard sheet format is not forced into a catalogue size. Construction is high-strength carbon steel with powder coating over an anti-rust treatment, galvanised where wash-down or humidity is a factor, CE marked and built under ISO 9001.

What Belongs on the Specification Sheet?

A quotation is only as good as the input. Record these before contacting any supplier:

Two entries cause most later problems: floor type and aisle clearance. Both are cheap to check at enquiry stage and expensive to discover at installation.

How Do You Plan the Layout?

Place the rack where remnants are created, not where there is spare floor. In a laser or punching cell that means a few steps from the discharge side; in bending, next to the press brakes where the drops come off. Distance is the main reason offcuts stop being reused, since a walk across the building never wins against pulling a fresh sheet.

Height is the other variable. Keep the highest tray at a level where a person can see into it, and put rarely used families at the top rather than heavy ones. A rack loaded correctly is one where the weight is low and the visibility is high.

What Does Commissioning Involve?

Four checks close out an installation: confirm the floor is level under all feet; test every drawer empty, then at half rating, before full loading; record the rating on each tray; and agree the classification rule — which family goes in which bay — then label it. That last step is the one most often skipped, and it decides whether the rack is still organised in six months.

Herochu ships racks to fabrication, laser cutting and sheet processing plants across Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North America.