Smart Sheet Metal Warehouse Rack System Automated racking system for warehouse

Herochu Smart Sheet Metal Warehouse Rack System – Automated Racking for Warehouses, CE/ISO Certified, Factory-Direct from $19,999

Specification

Sheet metal does not forgive sloppy storage. A 4 m by 2 m, 20 mm mild-steel plate weighs 1.25 t; drag it across the floor and you lose flatness, scratch the surface, and pay the laser cutter again for re-work. Stack it three-high and the bottom plate turns into a banana. Leave it in random piles and your forklift drivers become quality inspectors, hunting the right gauge while the fibre laser waits idle. The Herochu Smart Sheet Metal Warehouse Rack System removes guesswork, floor clutter, and damaged stock in one motion by pairing a high-density vertical carousel with a servo-driven extractor that delivers the exact sheet to the loading table in under 45 seconds—every time, without an operator climbing a ladder or touching a clamp.

Built around the sheet, not the forklift
Standard pallets are designed for boxes; sheet metal is a different animal. Herochu cassettes are laser-cut from 8 mm S355 and welded into a rigid grid that supports up to 3 t per shelf while keeping deflection below 0.5 mm over 4 m. Each cassette is partitioned into 50 mm adjustable slots so one rack can store 1 mm aluminium sheets next to 30 mm armour plate without additional fixtures. Soft PVC inserts protect polished stainless from fork scratches; optional copper-inlaid strips dissipate static when you store coated electrical steel. The carousel rotates on a 270 mm diameter hardened rail, driven by a 5.5 kW SEW geared motor with absolute encoder positioning accurate to ±1 mm. You call up gauge 10 CR4, the system knows it lives on shelf 47, rotates 1.8 revolutions, and stops with shelf 47 flush to the transfer table—no hunting, no overshoot.

Footprint that pays rent
A typical 100-shelf Herochu tower occupies 5.2 m × 2.3 m—12 m² of floor—and stores 300 t of sheet metal. To reach the same capacity with block stacking you would need 450 m² and still suffer 3 % edge damage. At European industrial rent of €70/m²/year the space saved is worth €30,660 annually, meaning the rack repays itself in eight months before you count labour or scrap reduction. Height is customizable from 3.5 m to 12 m; taller systems use a dual-motor anti-twist drive to keep sway within EN 528 limits even in 90 km/h seismic zones.

Plug-and-play with your existing line
The rack speaks EtherCAT, OPC-UA and plain Modbus TCP, so integration with Trumpf, Bystronic or Amada loaders takes an afternoon, not a week. The standard interface delivers sheet to a 1.6 m pick-up height; if your laser sits on a mezzanine we simply raise the transfer bridge. Need night-shift unmanned operation? Add the Herochu Load-Check module: a 3-D vision cell confirms sheet dimensions, thickness and hole pattern before release, then updates your MRP in real time. Inventory is tracked down to the kilogram; the system warns you when remnant drops below the minimum you set for the next nest, preventing costly part-change interruptions.

Safety engineered, not retrofitted
Every access point is guarded by Category-4 light curtains and Fortress interlocked gates. If an operator reaches into the carousel the drive coasts to stop in 200 ms and cannot restart until the gate is closed and the two-hand button is pressed. Inside the tower, a laser scanner creates a 270° protective field; intrusion triggers immediate brake and reverses 50 mm to release pressure. The frame is designed for 1.5 times the rated load plus 0.3 g lateral acceleration, satisfying both EU EN 528 and US ASME B30.13. Fire suppression nozzles are pre-piped at 500 mm intervals; in the event of a thermal event the PLC opens the Nitrogen valve and shuts down the line without waiting for human intervention.

Real numbers from real plants
Bremen-based Behrens Blech installed two 8 m, 80-shelf towers in 2022. Before: 1.2 ha of outdoor canopy storage, two forklifts, three stock clerks, 2 % scratch scrap. After: 240 m² indoor footprint, one part-time clerk, 0.1 % scrap, laser utilisation up 18 %. Payback: 11 months. Italian subcontractor LMA doubled throughput on a 2 kW BySprint Fiber after adding a Herochu tower with automatic remnant return; they now run 22-hour unmanned shifts and bill an extra €1.4 M per year.

Customisable to your workshop, starting at $19,999
The entry-level HC-SM-50 single-tower system includes 50 shelves, 1.5 t per shelf, 4 m × 2 m sheet size, manual loading table, and Ethernet interface. Ships pre-wired on one steel skid; anchor, connect power, and you are live in six hours. Upgrade options:

• Tandem or triple towers for 200-plus shelves
• Copper-free design for MRI-grade non-ferrous plants
• Sub-zero package to –30 °C for aerospace autoclave lines
• Explosion-proof ATEX Zone 22 drive for aluminium polishing shops
• Remnant sorting conveyor that drops off-cuts into colour-coded bins
• Cloud dashboard for multi-site inventory visibility on phone or laptop

Certification and support
Herochu towers are designed under ISO 9001:2015, carry CE declaration to EN 528, EN 60204-1 and EN ISO 13849-1 Performance Level e. Structural steel is shot-blasted SA 2½ and finished with RAL 5017 powder coat (food-grade optional). All drives and sensors are off-the-shelf European brands with 48-hour global spares. We provide FAT videos, lifetime remote diagnostics, and a five-year warranty on the frame, two years on drives, lifetime on software updates.

Stop feeding your laser with guesswork and damaged sheets. Install a Herochu Smart Sheet Metal Warehouse Rack System and turn inventory into a quiet, predictable extension of your cutting line—one that never takes a coffee break and never drops a plate on its edge.