Cantilever tool and jig storage for an engineering workshop, Swansea.
Heavy tooling and jigs taken off the workshop floor and onto open-fronted cantilever arms, at pick height and craneable.
Manufacturing and engineering · Cantilever racking · Swansea
- Positions, before → after
- 48 arm positionsBefore: 0 dedicated positions
- Floor area recovered
- 31%
- Installation
- 2 days
- Downtime avoided
- No production stoppage
The challenge.
- Jigs and press tooling were stored on the workshop floor and on improvised timber bearers, which put lifting operations and walkways in conflict every shift.
- Retrieving a tool meant moving two or three others first, and nobody could say with confidence how much floor the tooling actually occupied.
The constraints.
- Overhead crane access had to be kept clear along the full length of the run.
- The workshop could not stop: installation had to fit around two production shifts.
- Tools ranged from short fixtures to long jigs, so a fixed pallet footprint would waste capacity.
What we specified, and why.
Each line of the specification answers one part of the problem. Here is the reasoning, line by line.
- Double-sided cantilever racking with height adjustable arms
- No front upright obstructs the load, so the crane can place tools directly onto the arms from above or from the side.
- Arm lengths matched to the tooling depth
- The deepest jigs set the arm length, with arm spacing chosen so the shortest fixtures still sit on at least two arms.
- Rack end protection at the gangway end
- The run ends on a forklift route, which is statistically the highest strike location.
Installation.
- Base fixings were drilled and set during the late shift, with columns and arms erected over the following day.
- The run was signed off with load notices fixed at each column and a layout drawing issued to the workshop supervisor.
The outcome.
- Every tool now has a numbered location that the crane can reach without double handling.
- The cleared floor became a marked laydown area beside the presses.
Tools go back where they came from now, and the crane driver can see every one of them from the cab.
The system behind this project.
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