Small shop material storage?

[604Pook]

I am used to having a 60' of floor to 18' up material racking at the family business, which we had storage for odd ball off cuts in pallet type bins for the off cuts.

I moved 6 hours from that shop, and live in the woods on a dirt road, 30 minutes from a small town with minimal materials available. I figure I need to stock my commonly used materials, along with some handy sizes so I have material on hand for whatever comes up. I will likely be bringing material back with me from big city trips so I save $ on the shipping.

Needing some ideas for storying round stock, flat bar and tubing. Max length 20' but I will likely cut things down to 10' unless for a specific job.

For guys working out of small spaces how do you do store material?

 

[kustomizer]

Vertically for all the 12' stuff and the 20' stuff goes on a rack in a Conex container.

 

[sfriedberg]

I have a tiny, overstuffed shop. Stuff 3' to 10' goes near vertically. I have a shop-made rack that leans against a wall at about 5 degrees with three "stalls" to keep things organized, where one stall is split at the 4' level with a horizontal divider. 3' and under goes on conventional commercial shelving, or vertically in chunks of PVC pipe or very light gauge metal tube along the walls.

 

[implmex]

Hi 604Pook:
I made a set of horizontal racks by splitting PVC sewer pipes from Home Depot on the tablesaw and then welding up a tubular steel rack from 16 ga 1" x 2" rectangular tube to put two split halves onto every shelf.
I have 6 shelves each with 2 troughs.
They are super nice to store round bar up to about 2" diameter...each trough is small enough that you can still find everything you put into it...even a 3" long piece of 1/8" bar and nothing can fall out.
I can still reach the top shelf without a ladder and they are spaced far enough apart that I can get into every shelf easily.
It's 12 feet long, sticks out from the wall 10 inches and is 48 inches tall.
It's bolted to the wall in the corridor that houses the compressor and the toilet, and takes up almost no space.
The struts that hold the bottom shelf sit on the floor so I can load it right up and it won't pull down the wall.

I used to have a set of vertical racks...what a pain in the ass!
I was forever losing shorts and long bars were forever tipping over.
So I made the switch to horizontal racking and my life is much better now.

Cheers

Marcus
www.implant-mechanix.com
www.vancouverwireedm.com

 

[Garwood]

Steel 5 gal buckets work good for standing up small rods and tubes 2-5 feet long.

I put small heavy rounds and plates on heavy steel shelves.

Everything over 4ft goes on HD finger racking.

Shipping containers and semi trailers are great for storing materials.

 

[Rob L]

I have more spare roof height than I do floor space so I have a sturdy crate a small low noise compressor came in filled with large diameter poster tubes that I stack bars 1m - 3m long in vertically. It's a bit awkward and not ideal however it was essentially free and allows me to keep different materials and bar sizes separate.

 

[Garwood]

My opinion, small shop should not be buying enough stock that it is an issue. I have one 8L 3w 8H rack with all my stock on it. No way that amount of stock is arranged vertically in that dense a space. It is right next to my saw so I can pull it and slide it on the rollers.
I have another shelving unit with stock I should have thrown away stashed in a corner.


why is that line struck out? mystery...

I think it depends on the work you do.

I do a lot of emergency repair work and having a chunk of material on the shelf is the difference between me getting the $5000 or the Cat dealer getting it.

I find there's kind of a network of material hoarder folks. Machine shop owners, farmers, loggers around here. Once you have a few semi trailers worth of stock piled up you're suddenly part of the club and you can barter with other's for things in their stash.

I like living right on the ragged edge of what could be considered hoarding. I give away and scrap a lot of stuff, but I also have one hell of an organized stockpile of hardware and materials. A friend of mine puts me to shame and he's getting ready to close his shop down and retire. He's asked me to take his 5 semi trailers of materials and tooling collected over 50 years. That's a scary prospect for me. I think that would put me solidly in hoarder territory, but I might be OK with that. Haven't decided yet.

 

[kustomizer]

I have to drive 60 miles to get "delivered" material that is beat to hell from being dragged on and off trucks. It is 12 hours round trip to "will call" material at our better supplier and get material in nice shape. We are a small shop with repeat parts we typically have a years worth of finished inventory parts and assy hardware with another years worth standing in a 16 foot long vertical rack 7-10k lbs of aluminum and a couple tons of steel, stainless and brass. Plastics are leaned up in a corner as we don't need a lot of that except 1" delrin. I don't think the stress and cost of shipping what we need when we need it could possibly be worth it so we stock it.

 

[hvnlymachining]

Having steel in stock gives us a huge edge on our competition, as we've become known for our stock and as such get the calls for hurry work (not always fun but pays well) and raw material sales for other shops in a pinch. Also don't have to question wether or not material will arrive on time for short lead time parts.

Of course getting steel out here is different than for those in more industrialized areas. Most is at least a week out + Shipping cost.

As for storage, I'm in that same boat, taking up too much precious space these days. Time to build a shed or get a trailer or conex since much of it is 20' sticks. Just hate working with freezing cold steel vs shop temp....

 

[rons]

For guys working out of small spaces how do you do store material?

You can save space inside if you store outside the metals the don't rust so fast. Underneath a slope roof outside.
I use a type of cart that has those wheels with the Metro label. A shelving system on wheels for stuff under 4' works for me.
Anything longer and it lays horizontal.

If you intend to construct a storage solution then Superstrut might do something for you.

 

[Rob L]

My opinion, small shop should not be buying enough stock that it is an issue. I have one 8L 3w 8H rack with all my stock on it. No way that amount of stock is arranged vertically in that dense a space. It is right next to my saw so I can pull it and slide it on the rollers.
I have another shelving unit with stock I should have thrown away stashed in a corner.


why is that line struck out? mystery...

At the end of 2019/start of 2020 (can't quite remember) I bought enough alu bar to last just shy of 2 years of production of my own products, this was just before the UK officially left the EU and since the aluminium I use comes from Italy, I had the cash for it and the space it didn't seem like an awful idea.

Anyway it turned up and I did feel like I'd gone very OTT, covid hit, supplies got tight and it felt less OTT, then I saw how much it'd gone up once manufacturing here started to get going again and it turned out to have been a smart investment, if anything I wish I'd bought a bit more in some different sizes.

Not a normal situation but one where buying and storing a lot does make sense.

Also the grade of alu I typically use isn't available from many suppliers, the main one that has it isn't reliable, last delivery took about 2 weeks of delivery attempts, taking wrong material back, bringing missing material back to me etc, buying extra and storing provides a buffer that takes what could be a major issue down to an annoyance.

 

[Stirling]

I think it all depends on the size/weight of materials.
I keep a new shorts of random stuff that’s common. Nothing over 100lb so I can lift it. Short stuff stays in the shop 22’x22’
A few 12’ sticks of 5” 6061 that me and my wife can lift. They are stored outside under the utility trailer. Then some sa and 6061 small bars on top Te shed.

If I could lift more I’d keep some larger steels around for the emergency stuff

 

[Stirling]

Slightly off topic.
What are small shop people doing to lift/transport materials around their shops?

 

[hvnlymachining]

Slightly off topic.
What are small shop people doing to lift/transport materials around their shops?

Home built carts, hanging chain hoists everywhere useful, an engine crane or two. And a forklift for the big stuff stored outside. (when the forklift was down we used a derrick truck)

 

[Garwood]

Slightly off topic.
What are small shop people doing to lift/transport materials around their shops?

5 ton bridge crane, 10k forklift, 4k forklift.

 

[hvnlymachining]

5 ton bridge crane, 10k forklift, 4k forklift.

Spoiled..........

 

[lucky7]

5 ton bridge crane, 10k forklift, 4k forklift.

Small shop and 5 ton bridge crane?
lucky guy!

photos would be nice.

 

[Stirling]

5 ton bridge crane, 10k forklift, 4k forklift.

I miss bridge cranes soooo badly!!
I always had a 5-10-20 at the shops I worked for.

Now I’m in a residential double car garage in a residential city subdivision. No forklifts or height for cranes :/
God bless good neighbours tho!

 

[Garwood]

Small shop and 5 ton bridge crane?
lucky guy!

photos would be nice.

Here is sneaking the 34' bridge through the 20' wide door.



Here's the crane columns stood on their footings and the first of four roof support I-beams



This is what I looked at 12 hours a day 7 days a week for about 6 months straight. Long slog building a big building in a wet Northwest winter and spring.

I am not sure much luck was involved.

 

[M. Moore]

Here is my rack. It is 8’ tall and holds 10-12’ long material on four supports. Primarily flat bar stock with some angle and some tube as well. The pieces lift down and either go left or right for cutting on my cold saws. It is a very efficient system for my work.
The deliveries roll in on a modified lineberry cart that can easily move around with 1500 lbs. I don’t do a lot of round bar work so I don’t carry much stock.

I used 1.5” square tube and then have a 1” tube inside that I can pull out for crane loading then I flip or slide the pieces back. The 3/4” x 4” x 10’ is just over 100lbs so the crane is handy for those but most stock I can just lift off as needed.
I get all my stock pre-cut in half at the supplier given I use fairly short pieces all the time. For longer stock I have a bandsaw setup outside.