In a fabrication shop that works with 6-meter steel tubes, the same scene repeats daily. Bundles arrive from the mill, get dropped near the saw or laser, pile up in loose rows, and somewhere in that pile is the exact size needed right now. A 3-ton telescopic cantilever rack from Herochu breaks the pattern: each bundle goes into its own compartment at a height where a crane or forklift can reach it without disturbing anything else. This article walks through the loading routine, the dual-side discharge feature, and the reasons the rack cuts damage and search time as much as it saves space.

The daily routine this rack changes

Before the rack, pulling a 6-meter bundle means re-stacking whatever is on top of it. The floor pile grows through the week, and every retrieval is a small rearranging job. With the rack, the sequence is fixed: the bundle is lifted once, placed in its compartment, and stays there until it is consumed. The floor in front of the rack stays clear, the crane makes one move per bundle instead of several, and the operator always knows which compartment holds which size.

Step by step: loading a bundle with the manual crank

The manual crank turns loading into a repeatable four-step sequence. First, the operator cranks the telescopic arms out into the aisle. Second, the hoist or forklift lowers the bundle onto the extended arms, well clear of the columns. Third, the operator cranks the arms and the load back into the rack footprint. Fourth, the bundle rests in its compartment, held in place by the mechanical transmission. Unloading simply reverses the order: extend, lift, retract. No one climbs the rack, no one reaches across a gap, and the same motion is used on every level, which makes the routine easy to train and hard to get wrong. The crank stroke on a Herochu rack is sized so that one operator can run the full extension without straining, even at the top level.

Dual-side mechanical assistance

The discharge mechanism works from both sides of the rack. Material can be placed on one side and pulled from the other, or served from either side depending on where the crane and the cutting machines sit. That matters in real layouts: racks can be positioned back to back, or with one side against a wall, without losing access to any compartment. The dual-side drive also keeps long bundles moving square. Because the extension is driven evenly from both ends of the arm assembly, a 6-meter load travels out and in without skewing, so it arrives at the crane hook in the same orientation every time. Herochu balances both drives at the factory, so the arms travel together under a full 3-ton bundle.

The 600 mm clear space

Clear space is the vertical opening between levels, and on these racks it is 600 mm as standard and customizable. That opening is what makes the whole operation comfortable: slings and straps pass through it, the bundle enters the compartment without scraping the level above, and the operator can see the full depth of the level while loading. Tighter clearances shave a little height from the rack, but a 600 mm opening repays the difference in faster handling and less edge contact, which is why Herochu specifies it as the default.

Fewer scratches, fewer rejects

Steel tubes arrive in several surface conditions, from black welded tube to galvanized and painted stock, and all of them are easy to scratch when they slide against one another. In a floor pile, the act of pulling one bundle drags it across its neighbors. In a compartment, each bundle rests in isolation, so the tube surfaces and the cut ends stay clean. For coated tubes headed into architectural or visible applications, the reduction in surface damage shows up directly as fewer rejects and less rework.

Cutting search time

Organized storage changes the question an operator asks. Before, the question is “where did that batch go?” and the answer requires walking the pile. After, the question is “which compartment number?” and the answer is on the rack. Each compartment holds one size or one order, so the 48.3 x 3.2 mm bundle is exactly where the last one was put, and cycle counts become a visual pass down the aisle instead of a hunt. For shops running multiple diameters, that routine saves minutes on every single retrieval, and the minutes add up across hundreds of picks per week. The compartment plan, agreed with Herochu at specification time, is what makes that routine hold up shift after shift.

Safety on the floor

The geometry removes the three most common long-material accidents: falls from height, strains from pulling heavy stock, and tubes rolling off unstable piles. The crank is operated at floor level, the mechanical hold keeps every bundle in place at rest, and the rack holds the material instead of the floor pile holding it. Aisles stay clear because nothing overhangs, and the walking and storage zones stay separate. For safety inspections, a tidy racking system with rated loads per level is also far easier to document than an informal floor stack.

The model that matches this job

The Herochu HC-G6053 accepts 6,000 mm pipes with a rated load of 3,000 kg per level across five layers, with the layer count customizable, and the HC-G6053S variant shares the same platform for layouts where the S configuration fits better. The frame is Q235B high-strength steel with dual-beam crossbars, the same construction used across the Herochu long-material range. For shops that expect to move into longer stock later, the family scales upward to 9,000 mm and 12,000 mm units at 5,000 kg per level, so the storage plan can grow without being replaced.

Making the change

Moving 6-meter tube storage off the floor onto a 3-ton telescopic cantilever rack does not require new machines or a bigger building. It requires a layout decision and one afternoon of installation. The Herochu team works from the bundle list and the handling equipment already in the hall, so the rack arrives sized for the real inventory, and the daily routine described above starts on the first shift after commissioning.