Material handling solutions

There’s a difference between the way materials are handled in a larger woodshop and how things are done in a one or two-man shop. High production outfits are looking at automation and software, while smaller businesses are more interested in gaining a little manual advantage. There, the woodworkers want to be able to handle sheet goods or heavy boxes of hardware, or even assembled cabinets, without having to call for help. In a one or two-man shop, production can grind to a halt when something needs to be moved. But there are some low-tech, relatively inexpensive ways to avoid that situation.

New products from Grizzly Industrial (grizzly.com) include the Lumber/Plywood Cart (T34007, $650) and the Mobile Lumber Rack (T34006, $499). The former is designed to hold both sheet goods (full and partial), plus boards, timbers and long lengths. It has large 5” casters, is built with 18-gauge steel, and can handle up to 990 lbs. of material. There are safety pins to stop wood from falling off the arms, and the dimensions are 59” wide x 43-1/4” deep x 50” high. The taller but more slender Mobile Lumber Rack (47-1/4” wide x 39-1/4” deep x 59” high) can carry 1,110 lbs.

Grizzly also makes a handy Panel Lifting Cart (T33312, $164.95) with locking casters that can be used to move materials, and the top tips so that sheets can be loaded into a storage rack, machine, bench, or sawhorses.

Tractor Supply has just added the Super Handy material lifter, which is perfectly sized for moving cabinets about the shop (item TRI-GU0097 at tractorsupply.com). It has a foot-operated brake and a winch to lift the load. There’s also a forklift mode for handling bulky materials on pallets.

Topper Industrial in Sturtevant, Wisc. (topperindustrial.com) makes several heavy-duty hand carts with rotating tops. The platforms have detents that lock in at certain angles, which can be quite useful when loading sheet goods onto machines. Topper also makes a rotating platform cart that could reduce the need for bending and lifting in a finishing booth.

One of the most common material handling challenges in small shops is where and how to store partial sheets of plywood and MDF. Saw Trax suggests making it mobile. The Georgia manufacturer (sawtrax.com) makes a Rack & Roll cart ($689), a low-profile dolly with a zero turning radius that’s easy to load and easy to maneuver through a crowded shop. It has 4” locking casters that are mounted right at the corners of the dolly, giving it good ground clearance even on uneven surfaces. The small footprint lets it roll up or down most rental truck loading ramps, and an interchangeable post system means the shop can organize cut-offs according to size or type.

It has been around a while, so the Material Mate from Rockler (rockler.com) is certainly shop-tested. This is a budget-conscious way to move large materials around a woodshop without asking other employees for help. It’s a rolling cart with a tilting top that can go vertical to slide plywood through a 30” doorway or lie horizontal when loading sheets out of the back of a pickup. And when it’s not hauling materials in or out of the shop, it makes a dandy outfeed table.

For loading heavy goods onto benches or saws in a higher production environment, Southworth Products (southworthproducts.com) makes lift tables that have a steel tray that sits right on the floor, so a pallet truck can roll right on and deposit a load of plywood. Then the truck is pulled out and the table’s scissors lift mechanism raises it to workbench or machine-top height, all the way up to 35-3/8” or anywhere in between. The lifting or lowering is controlled by either a footswitch or a pushbutton pendant. The lifts operate on 115-volt power and can be equipped with a wide range of safety and convenience options.

U-Line (uline.com) has a comprehensive selection of material handling equipment that could solve problems for small woodshops, including electric forklifts (items H-5439 and H-5440), scissors lifts, pallet movers and dollies.

The Home Depot (homedepot.com) carries a large selection of dollies with casters, many of which are designed to move large pieces of furniture, so they work well for completed cabinets or cartons of parts and hardware.

MasterMover (mastermover.com) in Charlotte, N.C., offers ‘tuggers’ in a wide range of sizes. These are battery-powered machines that let a single employee move large and heavy loads around the shop, such as pallets of plywood.

The Troll 49D Panel Handler from Paragon Pro (paragonpromfg.com) allows the easy movement of multiple sheet goods by placing wheels underneath them. The 49D has a 300-lb. load rating and can eliminate the need to carry awkward, large sheets from one work site location to the other.

Moving materials around a big shop can involve return conveyors, vacuum lifts, CNC loaders/unloaders, forklifts and robotics, to name a few options.

James L. Taylor Mfg. (jamesltaylor.com) in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., makes a selection of automated return conveyors for edge banders, shaper/sanders, straight line rip saws, and wide belt sanders. A number of models are available to handle different sized panels, cabinet doors and other parts, all the way up to 50” wide by 96” long.

Stiles Machinery (stilesmachinery.com) offers everything from simple lift tables to entire panel storage and retrieval systems. Among the options are manual and automated conveyors, panel vacuum lifts, case clamps, stackers, and feeders. Stiles also carries artificial intelligence applications such as Kentwood rip saws and profilers that include board sensing, defect scanning, infeed and outfeed automation, and optimization software.

Biesse (biesse.com) offers a full complement of large-shop material handling equipment, including Winstore panel management, four Winner loading/unloading panel systems, and lifters and turners for production lines.

The Store-Master from Holz-Her U.S. (holzherusa.com) is a panel storage and retrieval system that is designed to reduce the man hours involved in material handling. It can position sheets in a customized as well as a sorted, standard mode. In each case, exactly the right panel is selected by a computer during retrieval.

SCM Group (scmgroup.com) offers a range of material handling solutions from stackers to storage modules, including Flexstore which is a panel moving system that can be integrated in production lines for nesting and/or sizing cells. Flexstore manages homogeneous and mixed stacks made of different dimensions and colors.

Tracking materials can be a challenge, and various software publishers have developed programs that are either stand-alone or part of a shop-wide ERP package. For example, Global Shop Solutions (globalshopsolutions.com) offers inventory software that provides automated purchasing, real-time inventory data, inventory tracking and optimization, cycle counting and physical inventory, multi-bin and multi-location tracking. And it ties material management into an overall picture that includes every other aspect of the business.

While we took a brief look at some of the industry leading systems here, and explored some new and familiar small shop options, the bottom line with material handling is that it is a very subjective area.

Every shop has different spaces, different materials, and different needs. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and asking the people on the shop floor is often the best place to start developing a plan. They know what they need, and where it needs to be.  

This article was originally published in the February 2024 issue.