One of the UK's leading racing car manufacturers turned to Action Handling when they needed a safe method of storing carbon fibre sheets. Carbon fibre is used extensively in the construction of modern 21st century racing cars. It’s not only the cars that are fast, with speeds exceeding 200mph, the race industry also demands rapid action on the part of their supply chain.

Carbon fibre sheets come in a variety of material thicknesses. A safe storage method was required to handle sheets from 8mm up to 50mm thick. The sheets are extremely expensive at over £100 per kg for high grade carbon and therefore need careful handling.   

Daily deliveries of carbon fibre sheet were being made and damages to the material were running at unacceptably high levels, so specialist storage racks were needed quickly to solve the issue. A working drawing was produced within 3 days and a sample rack provided within 10 days, followed by a quantity of racks that were delivered within 3 weeks.

The freestanding horizontal racks were fitted with load/unload rollers to the facing edge to protect the carbon sheet and the individual support bars were then covered with impact protection rubber sections to offer further safety against damage during the storage process.

The main construction of the racks was as follows:

• Framework fabricated from 40mm box section.
• Overall dimensions: height 1560mm x width 1100mm x depth 1400mm.
• Powder coated finish: blue RAL5010.
• Fitted with 8 x sheet location levels, capacity 200kg per level.
• The carbon fibre sheets are 1300mm x 1000mm (8,10,12,20,25,30,40,50mm thick).
• Clear spacing between each level 150mm.
• Fitted with front entry rollers to assist with loading and unloading of sheets.
   

 

We’re happy to report that, for a modest cost, a quantity of horizontal sheet racks was produced in double quick time and consequently the damage levels to the carbon were reduced by 95%.

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