The Sheet Metal Material Magazine Incorporates Internal Loading

A material magazine, in its simplest form, is a structure that holds sheet metal in organized shelves. But Herochu asks: why should loading be an external attachment? Why should the magazine wait passively for a separate loader to arrive? The answer is embodied in the HC-A6025, where the sheet metal material magazine incorporates internal loading as a native, non-negotiable feature. From the first design sketch, engineers at Herochu integrated the telescopic fork, vacuum system, and motion controller into the magazine’s spine. The result is a self-sufficient material tower that requires no external unstacker, no floor-mounted lifter, and no operator intervention for standard cycles.

This internal loading architecture delivers advantages that external add‑ons cannot match. Compactness: the magazine’s footprint is only its shelf area plus a small service corridor. Speed: the internal loader travels along dedicated rails that are shorter and stiffer than any external gantry. Reliability: internal components are protected from dust, forklift collisions, and accidental impacts. For high-volume fabricators running double shifts, the HC-A6025 with internal loading becomes the heartbeat of production.

Mechanical Design: How Internal Loading Works

In the HC-A6025, the sheet metal material magazine incorporates internal loading through a vertically traveling carriage that houses the telescopic fork. The carriage moves on linear guide rails mounted inside the magazine’s front columns. A chain drive system, powered by a servo motor with absolute encoder, positions the carriage at any shelf height with ±0.2 mm repeatability.

When a loading command is issued, the carriage travels to the target shelf. The telescopic fork – three overlapping segments driven by a toothed belt – extends horizontally approximately 1.5 meters into the shelf. Vacuum suction cups, arranged in a grid pattern that the customer can customize based on typical sheet sizes, descend onto the top sheet of the stack. A vacuum pressure switch confirms successful grip. The fork lifts the sheet by approximately 5 mm, retracts, and then the carriage travels down to the outlet port height. The fork extends again, placing the sheet directly onto the cutting machine’s support table or onto an optional shuttle conveyor. The entire sequence is orchestrated by a PLC that communicates with the cutting machine’s controller via standard digital I/O or fieldbus (Profinet, EtherCAT, or Ethernet/IP).

For unloading finished parts, the process reverses. The carriage travels to an empty shelf or a designated “finished parts” pallet. The telescopic fork extends, picks up cut parts (using suction or magnetic grippers, depending on material), retracts, and stores them. Skeleton waste is dropped into a separate bin located at the machine exit, never entering the magazine.

Floor Configurations and Scalability

The HC-A6025 designation indicates a maximum sheet size of 6,000 mm × 2,500 mm, but the internal loading magazine is also available in smaller footprints: 3015, 4015, 4020, 6015, and 6020. Number of storage floors can be specified from 8 to 13, giving a total storage capacity ranging from 24 tonnes (8 floors × 3 tonnes) to 65 tonnes (13 floors × 5 tonnes).

What makes the internal loading design particularly valuable is its ability to be ganged. Two or three Herochu magazines can be placed side by side, each with its own internal loader, feeding a single wide-format cutting machine. The control software coordinates which magazine supplies the next sheet, balancing wear across loaders and enabling seamless changeovers between different material grades.

Operational Advantages of Internal Loading

Because the sheet metal material magazine incorporates internal loading, there are no external transfer devices to configure or maintain. This simplicity reduces training time for operators – they learn one interface (the Herochu HMI) instead of coordinating between a storage controller and a separate loader controller. Fault diagnostics become centralized: if the magazine fails to load a sheet, the issue is either the vacuum system, the fork extension, or the carriage movement. All three are visible from the same maintenance panel.

Another advantage is cleanliness. External loaders often drag sheets across rollers or brushes, generating fine metallic dust that settles on sensitive laser optics. Internal loading within a sealed magazine environment contains this dust within the magazine’s extraction hood. Many Herochu customers report extending laser lens cleaning intervals from weekly to monthly after installing internally loading magazines.

Integration with Smart Sorting and Traceability

Optional robotic sorting modules can be added to the HC-A6025, transforming the internally loading magazine from a storage device into a part‑sequencing system. After cutting, a small articulated robot mounted at the outlet port picks individual parts from the cutting table, reads their barcode or RFID tag, and places them into designated bins on shelves within the same magazine. The magazine’s internal loader then stores those bins in the appropriate floors. When the downstream bending cell requests a batch of parts, the internal loader retrieves the bin and presents it at the outlet port – all without operator touch.

Traceability is handled by Herochu’s MES connector software, which logs every sheet’s lot number, thickness, grade, and remaining surface area. This data is invaluable for ISO quality audits and for calculating true material utilization across production runs.

Payload and Speed Specifications

Vertical lifting speed: 9 m/min. Inlet/outlet speed (horizontal fork movement): 12 m/min. Maximum stack weight handled per cycle: 200 kg, though the shelf load capacity can be 3 t or 5 t. Air supply requirement: 0.6–0.7 MPa clean dry air. Noise level tested at 68 dB(A) during full-speed operation – quieter than the accompanying laser’s exhaust blower. Power supply: 380–480 V, three‑phase, 50/60 Hz.

Conclusion: Internal Loading as the New Benchmark

Herochu has demonstrated that the optimal place for loading hardware is inside the magazine, not beside it. When the sheet metal material magazine incorporates internal loading, fabricators gain a system that is faster, safer, more compact, and easier to maintain than any external-loader alternative. The HC-A6025 is not a compromise – it is the full expression of integrated material handling.