Electric Telescopic Cantilever Shelves for Long Goods – Tubes, Pipes & Profiles

What the electric version actually does

The structure is still a cantilever rack: uprights, base plates, arms at fixed spacing, end stops. What changes is the tier carriage. Each level has its own drive — a motor and gearbox on the carriage, or a chain drive running on the column — with limit switches at the retracted and extended positions. Soft start and stop keeps a loaded tier from jerking at either end, which matters when the load is a two-tonne bundle of 6-metre pipe.

Control is deliberately plain: tier selection by position, and an interlock that stops two tiers extending into the same aisle. On larger installations the controller can pass data to a WMS or ERP, so the pick list and the rack agree on where a bundle lives.

Manual crank versus electric drive

The manual version remains the right answer for low picks per shift and modest bundles. Electric earns its price where the pick count is high, where one operator runs the cell, or where the bundle weight makes a crank a two-person job.

Where electric pays for itself

Three situations repeat across Herochu installations.

High picks per shift. A service centre picking to order might extend tiers dozens of times a day, and at that frequency seconds per pick show up in the labour line.

Heavy, long stock. A 6-metre bundle of thick-wall tube is not cranked comfortably by hand, and once two people are needed the labour cost of storage doubles.

Single-operator cells. If the crane operator is also the machine operator, they cannot be at the crank and at the hook at the same time. A motorised tier removes that conflict entirely.

Safety is the design brief

A powered tier that carries tonnes is a machine, and it should be specified like one.

• Presence detection in the extension path, so the tier will not travel while someone is inside the frame.
• Overload protection on the drive, set against the tier’s rated load rather than the motor’s maximum.
• Mechanical lock in the extended position, engaged before the crane lifts, so a hydraulic or electrical failure cannot retract a loaded tier.
• Anti-drop arrangement for the carriage, independent of the drive brake.
• Emergency stop at each bay, within reach from the aisle, plus load charts per tier.

On Herochu units these are part of the standard control package, not add-ons quoted after the order.

None of this replaces the crane discipline. It removes the situations where someone leans into the rack because reaching in by hand is quicker than fetching a sling.

Cycle time, labour and the arithmetic of a pick

A powered tier turns a handling job into a button press. The operator selects the tier, waits for extension, slings the bundle, lifts, and retracts while traversing. The crane never waits for a crank, and the crane is the expensive asset in the loop.

Labor savings are easy to overstate, so measure them: picks per shift, people per pick, and the difference priced. In shops moving from floor stacks to an electric cell, one operator commonly does what previously took two — with fewer damaged bundles to sort out afterwards.

Space, layout and the point-of-use rule

Telescopic tiers need clear aisle in front of the rack — typically one and a half to two and a half metres, set by the hook block and the bundle swing. Within that limit the rack sits directly alongside the cutting cell. That is the whole point: travel distance drops to metres, material is at the point of use, and the floor given to stacks and forklift turning circles is released — up to half of it in dense workshops.

Herochu builds electric telescopic cantilever shelves for tube, pipe, profile and bar, with tier count, arm spacing and stroke set from the customer’s stock list, crane height and floor plan. Machines are supplied with the control panel wired for the site’s three-phase supply, and the load test is witnessed before shipment.

FAQ

How long can an electric telescopic tier extend? Stroke is set by the bundle depth and the crane’s approach. Most installations extend far enough for a vertical lift with the spreader clear of the tier above.

What happens during a power failure? The mechanical lock holds the tier in place and the brake holds the carriage. Recovery is manual and documented in the operating instructions.

Can it be retrofitted to an existing cantilever rack? Sometimes, if the frame and columns were built with that provision. A static rack welded without carriage guides generally cannot be converted safely, and Herochu checks the frame drawings before agreeing to a retrofit.

What maintenance does it need? Roller and guide inspection, brake check, limit switch verification and a load test at defined intervals. Bearings and drives are standard industrial components, not proprietary parts.

Key takeaways

Electric telescopic cantilever shelves replace operator effort with controlled motion. They suit heavy long stock, high pick rates and single-operator cells, and they bring the safety architecture — interlocks, mechanical lock, overload protection — that a manual crank cannot offer. Placed beside the machine, they turn storage into part of the production flow instead of a queue in front of it.