“Return on investment” is becoming a key phrase when it comes to investing in material handling equipment and storage solutions. Participants in the Australian market are expecting more and more from their investment with greater density and increased retrieval speeds, which should be the outcome of all good storage solutions.
One way to achieve this has been with a deep-lane storage solution. Historically this has been overlooked because it was economically unviable - until now. Thanks to the latest generation of pallet shuttle systems (satellite racking) and a new supplier in the market, this is now a genuine option. Coinciding with the launch of stow Australia was the release of the latest generation pallet shuttle system, the ‘stow Atlas II’. It is a deep-lane storage and retrieval system, i.e. a carrier used to move pallets within a specifically designed racking structure, thus optimising storage capacity.
How Does Deep-lane Storage Work?
The pallet shuttle system consists of a shuttle- specific rack and an automated mobile shuttle. The shuttle is a self-powered device that runs on rails in the storage lanes to autonomously load and unload pallets. The only human intervention is via a remote control that is used to select the mode of operation and start/stop.
Each shuttle unit runs on long life batteries and is transferred from one lane to another by a standard forklift truck. Once the pallet is placed in the lane the shuttle lifts the pallet and move it into the appropriate location in the lane. Once in the right location, the shuttle will lower the pallet into position and return to its home position for a new task. This is all done without human intervention, with the shuttle using advanced sensors and engineering to achieve this effortlessly. The shuttle system operates in two modes: continuous load and single load. In single-load mode, it will load one pallet, return to its starting location, and stop. In continuous mode, it will move a pallet, return to its starting location, and pick up the next pallet.
The stow Atlas system complies with the European FEM and EN regulations, and the quality is assured to ISO 9001. All components have been thoroughly tested in specialised laboratories, and are very cost-effectively produced in stow’s fully automated manufacturing unit to a high quality standard.