While metal fabrication remains one of the established trades in U.S. industry, new automation methods and equipment are helping job shops and manufacturers with fabrication cells increase their productivity and improve their product quality. One such area is the handling of sheet metal, which consumes a large amount of time and labor cost. Increasingly, fabricators are turning to automated material handling systems to alleviate some of the problems associated with manually handling and storing sheet metal. From conveyors to transfer tables, monorails, gantry robots, sheet stackers, and ence provides a thorough knowledge base to answer a multitude of questions. For example, a material handling systems provider can evaluate a fabricator's current needs on the shop floor. What type of automated material handling systems makes the most sense for the amount of open floor space? How can storage capacity be maximized? How much downtime is incurred because sheet metal is not easy to retrieve and set up for fabrication?
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