Sheet Metal Storage Racks

If your sheet stock is sitting flat on the floor, leaned against a wall, or stacked on pallets three high, you already know what it costs you. Somebody has to move four sheets to get the fifth. The forklift ties up for ten minutes. Edges get dinged, corners get bent, and the piece that gets scrapped was the expensive one.

A sheet metal storage rack fixes that by putting every sheet on its own drawer. Pull the drawer out, take what you need, push it back. No unstacking, no crane, no guessing what is at the bottom of the pile.

How a roll-out sheet rack works

The frame is a standard upright, usually 96 inches tall. Inside it, each level is a full-extension drawer riding on enclosed bearings. Load a drawer with a forklift from the rear, close it, and the sheet is stored in a fraction of the footprint it took on the floor. When somebody needs it, one person opens the drawer by hand.

• 5,000 lb UDL per drawer. That is a full lift of most common gauges, not a single sheet.
• Up to 13 drawers in a 96 in. frame. Clearance adjusts in 3 inch increments, so thin stock does not waste a level.
• 100% extension. The whole drawer clears the frame. You are not reaching into a rack.
• Lock-in, lock-out on every drawer. A loaded drawer stays where you put it.
• Rear loading standard on every model, so the aisle side stays clear for picking.

Three ways to configure it

All three store sheet stock vertically and bring it out to the operator. Which one you want comes down to how consistent your material is and how it gets to the machine.

Jump to: Roll Out Sheet Rack · Universal Sheet Rack · Sheet Tower

Roll Out Sheet Rack

All drawers, one size. The straightforward answer when your sheet sizes are consistent.

Every level is a full-extension drawer rated 5,000 lb, loaded from the rear by forklift and opened by hand from the aisle. Level spacing adjusts in 3 inch increments, so a drawer holding 16 gauge does not waste the height a drawer of plate needs.

Each drawer locks in and locks out independently, so a loaded drawer stays where the operator put it. If you run polished, coated or stainless stock, UHMW lining is worth the small adder.

Capacity	5,000 lb UDL per drawer
Drawers	Up to 13, 100 percent extension
Frame height	96 in. standard
Models	7 standard, 4 ft x 4 ft through 6 ft x 12 ft
Loading	Rear loading standard on all models
Frames	Fixed, hinged, double hinged or hybrid
Options	Solid or wire mesh drawer tops, removable drawer stoppers, cradle for cylinders and round parts, UHMW lining, drawer and fixed levels combined
Built	Made in Canada

Best for: shops running a consistent range of sheet sizes that want every level to behave the same way.

Universal Sheet Rack

Roll-out drawers and fixed levels in the same frame. Built for a material mix that changes.

What makes it universal is that the drawers are not locked to one frame. The same universal drawers install in a roll out sheet rack, a sheet tower or a hybrid rack, so you are not buying a closed system. Rails bolt rather than weld, which is what lets you move levels around later when your material mix moves.

It goes to 16 ft and takes drawers up to 144 by 72 inches. Two details matter if you run a laser: the drawer stoppers pull out temporarily so a sheet can slide straight into the cutting machine, and cassettes stack at full capacity with a stacking kit, which gets the wooden pallets out of the operation entirely. It also ties into their depalletizer.

Capacity	Up to 5,000 lb UDL per drawer
Drawers	Up to 13 per rack, plus cassettes above 96 in.
Frame heights	8, 12, 14, 15 and 16 ft
Drawer sizes	96 x 48, 120 x 48, 120 x 60, 144 x 60, 144 x 72 in.
Adjustment	3 in. minimum clearance, 3 in. increments
Cassettes	Convert to drawers with a bearing kit; 6 removable stoppers, expandable to 8; stackable at full capacity
Fits	Universal sheet rack, hybrid sheet rack and sheet tower
Options	Depalletizer integration, identification plates

Best for: shops whose material mix is changing, anyone feeding a laser directly, and operations trying to get wooden pallets out of the material flow.

Sheet Tower

Vertical cartridges instead of drawers. The forklift takes the whole cartridge to the machine.

Rather than pulling one sheet at a time, the tower stores material in cartridges a forklift can lift out whole and carry straight to the laser or plasma table. Fork pockets and lip guards are built into every cartridge.

It is the densest of the three. The manufacturer puts it at roughly 200 percent of what the same footprint holds in standard pallet or cantilever racking.

Capacity	5,000 lb per cartridge
Tower heights	8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 ft
Cartridge sizes	4 ft x 8 ft through 6 ft x 12 ft
Handling	Forklift, fork pockets built in
Density	About 200 percent of a comparable pallet or cantilever footprint

Best for: operations feeding a cutting table where staging time at the machine is the bottleneck.

Specifications

Custom sizes are normal on this line, not an exception. If your sheets do not fit a standard footprint, send us the dimensions.

Who these are for

• Metal fabricators and job shops running laser, plasma or waterjet, where the cutting table is the bottleneck and material staging decides how fast it runs.
• Steel service centers carrying dozens of gauge and alloy combinations that all have to stay separated and identifiable.
• OEM manufacturing with a fixed bill of material and a need to keep sheet stock at point of use without giving up the floor.
• Any shop that has run out of building before it ran out of work. Going vertical with sheet stock is usually the cheapest square footage you will ever buy.

Common questions