Jose Ruiz
10/7/03
Material Handling Equipment
Material handling equipment is categorized into material transport equipment, material storage equipment, and unitizing equipment. Material transport equipment includes industrial trucks, automated guided vehicles (AGVs), monorails and rail-guided vehicles, conveyors, cranes and hoists. Material storage equipment includes static and dynamic storage systems. Finally, unitizing equipment are tools such as tote pans, pallets, palletizing and depalletizing equipment. Here are some examples of different equipment in the three categories:
Material Transport Equipment
A pallet jack is used to carry pallet structures or objects placed on top of it through the ground.
A forklift truck is used to carry pallet structures or objects placed on top of it through the ground. They also can lift the load upward in order to perform tasks as storing an object in a rack. They are human operated and they are usually powered by gas or electric motor.
An AGV pallet jack performs the same task as a normal pallet jack. The difference is that being an AGV, it is self propelled and pathways are defined but with possible variations. Human drivers just guide when it picks up objects or when out of path.
An AGV forklift truck does basically the same as a normal forklift truck, but without a human operator.
An AGV train pulls other non-powered carts.
A unit load AGV is a device that carries decked containers or pallets upon it. It has sensors to detect obstacles and a bumper that makes the device stop when it encounters an obstacle.
Cranes and hoists are used to transport heavy objects. While the hoist lifts the load, the crane transports it.
Material Storage Equipment
A static pallet rack is used primarily to store pallets.
Unitizing equipment
Tote pans are used to gather large quantities of small sized materials.
Pallet stacking frames are used to store tall objects such as gas cylinders. They have openings in the bottom to be handles by forklift trucks and they are stacked three high.