Protecting your Pallet Racking system from damage
Posted by Systems Design on
Protecting your Pallet Racking system from damage.
Unfortunately, this is one of many warehouse maintenance tasks, that often receives consideration only after an accident or impact has done the damage to your valuable and sometimes vulnerable pallet racking components. That said, installing column guards, and rack end barriers is now a major recommendation from rack safety inspectors and the H&SE, so now is the time that protective equipment for your warehouse should perhaps feature more highly on your list of safety procedures.
With busy schedules, ever-tightening deadlines and more demands on logistics performance, the risk of accidents with mechanical handling, and in particular damage done in a hurry to pallet racks, increases.
Ideally, we should put protection of pallet racking in place, when the rack system or components are first purchased or freshly installed. However, it is something that can be easily overlooked either through lack of time, lack of funding or simply that the customer is unaware of measures that can be taken to protect their costly new warehouse investment.
So what steps can be taken to protect your pallet rack system?
Fortunately, there are several options, and one of the most popular ways, particularly if you are short on time or budget; is to fit plastic column guards to the vertical upright posts situated at the front of each rack system.
There's no need for specialist installers to fit the Column Guards, you can install them in-house in seconds, and they will not tear up the floor of your warehouse or storage unit, in the same way, that a more traditional steel guard may do after it has taken a severe hit. Saving both cost and downtime.
It is also relatively easy to remove and reinstate an individual rack protector if you need to inspect the racking post; if you suspect that an accident has caused damage to the mono -post.
Plastic bolt-free racking protectors can be fitted when the rack system is brand new, or easily retrofitted to existing rack uprights as necessary.
Our new range of Rack Guards is ideal for this purpose. Not unique as a product, we know, but we are bringing this range of Rack Guards to your attention as we feel this is one of the better examples available in the current market.
The first thing you will notice with our new Column Guards is that at 600mm high they are taller than average guards, this provides more protection all the way up the vulnerable first sections of racking.
You will also note that the fully recyclable plastic material is very resilient, and not so hard that it becomes brittle and cracks, a particularly common issue in colder environments. Yet it's also not so soft that a slight impact or graze cuts into the material. This is thanks to the new Reflex material that gives resistance and flexibility.
Another outstanding benefit to our rack protectors is the ability to provide impact resistance not just at the front of the exposed rack strut, but also the sides of the upright. This is partially achieved by having three different guard profiles to pick from, each profile size helps enable a correct fit, an important consideration when you must consider that rack posts vary from 70mm to over 120mm in width and each system has a differently formed design. So from these three profiles, we can give you a rack protector to properly fit virtually all racking systems on the market.
The real benefit from these rack guards is in the wrap around protection they provide to your pallet racks, which comes from a unique triple shock absorber. This integral feature is standard on all of our rack protection range and will help save the front plus both sides of the rack profile in the event of a forklift impact or other impacts from mechanical handling equipment.
Rack protectors that are cost effective to buy, cost-effective to install and one of the few quality racking guards to be tüv impact tested and in accordance with DIN EN15512.
So before your rack system takes another costly hit, we seriously recommend you take a look at the new reflex Rack Protection system recently introduced to this site and try some today. It will save you money!
For prices and information see:
https://www.equiptowork.com/collections/racking-shelving/products/rack-guards
