Product category:
Storage hardware and storage and racking systems
News Release from: Kasto | Subject: Cassette type storage tower - materials
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 21 May 2007
Storage tower speeds up metals delivery
A cassette type storage tower for tube and long metals stock is enabling faster delivery of materials to production machinery to manufacture metal furniture.
Storage of tube and other long stock has been consolidated in a KASTO cassette-type storage tower at the Blandford Forum, UK, factory of Hospital Metalcraft (Bristol Maid) The company is the UK's largest manufacturer of hospital equipment such as bedside cabinets, drip stands, drug cabinets and wheelchairs
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 23 May 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The result is faster delivery of material to production machinery, 24h/day.
The weatherproof tower was erected in the yard outside, adjacent to the factory building, so no factory space was lost.
Previously, over 100 different types of stainless steel and mild steel tubing was delivered daily to a sister unit 200m along the road, where it was placed in designated positions within conventional racking.
When required for production, material was taken to a sawing, deburring and cleaning centre.
Cut lengths were then carried in bins by forklift truck to welders in the unit where the KASTO Unitower 3.0 is now located.
In addition, full lengths of stock would be transported two or three times a day to be machined on a tube laser cutter.
Now all of this activity is centred on the Unitower, which has 42 cassettes capable of holding 3 tonnes of material each.
According to Hospital Metalcraft's production engineer, Chris Atkinson, round tube from 10 to 114mm diameter and from 1.2 to 2.0mm wall thickness is stored, together with square, rectangular and flat sided oval (FSO) tube, plus a small amount of solid bar.
Some cassettes are sub-divided into up to six compartments for holding smaller quantities of slow-moving stock.
Only full 6.25m lengths are held in the store - no pre-cut lengths or work in progress (although they could be) - and approximately one tonne of tube is processed through the system daily.
Stock is handled into the cassettes in the yard with the help of an overhead crane supplied with the Unitower.
Calling up material is simply a matter of identifying the appropriate cassette and punching its location number into the Unitower control, whereupon the material is delivered automatically.
Even if one of the cassettes in the highest location is chosen, it takes less than a minute to retrieve the stock.
Additional advantages of the new material store, apart from a leaner manufacturing environment, include less risk of transportation damage to the tube and reduced manual handling of heavy stock.
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