Nothing to plug in. Nothing to break.

A hand-wheel driven mobile shelving system for archives that are opened a handful of times a day — and that still have to work twenty years from now, in a room with no power socket near the wall.

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0 WEnergy draw

30 yrDesign service life

60%Floor area recovered

Built like a machine, not like furniture.

Every load path in a manual run is mechanical. That is the point — fewer parts, no controller, no firmware, nothing that needs a technician on call.

1:12 reduction gearbox

A sealed reduction drive turns the hand wheel into the force needed to move a fully loaded bay. Staff move several tonnes with one hand.

≤ 60 N crank force at full load

Mechanical aisle lock

A keyed lock on every carriage holds the run closed outside working hours. No electronics, no battery, no code to reset after a holiday.

Per-carriage or master key options

Anti-tilt rail assembly

The ground rail is anchored to the slab and each carriage carries a tilt arrestor, so a fully extended bay stays vertical on an uneven floor.

Tested at 80 kg per shelf level

Day 1–2 · The floor railA 24-metre run arrives in 3 m rail sections, is levelled to ±2 mm along its whole length and anchor-bolted to the slab. No floor cutting, no dust, and the rail can be unbolted if the room ever changes.

Day 3–4 · The carriagesCarriages arrive numbered in installation order — about ten bays a day for a two-person crew. Each is aligned on the rail, loaded with its shelf levels and checked for smooth travel before the next one goes on.

Day 5 · Sign-offShelf pitches are set to match the archive’s own indexing, end panels and label holders are fitted, and your staff walk every run with the installer before the handover sheet is signed.

Where manual is the right answer.

We sell three systems, and manual is not the cheap one — it is the correct one in four specific situations. If your room matches any of these, an electric drive would be money spent on speed you never use.

Low retrieval frequencyRooms opened a few times a day — county registries, sealed evidence stores, backup archives — never recover the cost of a motor.

No reliable power at the wallBasement and heritage buildings often have no spare circuit near the shelving. Manual needs none.

Procurement frames with tight budgetsManual carries roughly 60% of the capital cost of an equivalent electric run, and no electrical subcontract in the tender.

Sites without maintenance coverRemote or single-custodian stores with no technician on call. A hand wheel and a greased bearing is the whole service plan.

Close detail of a manual compactor shelving hand wheel and drive chain — The drive is a chain, a shaft and a reduction gear. Any maintenance technician in the building can service it with hand tools.

“We specified manual because nothing in this room is allowed to stop working when the power does.”

Facilities lead · Provincial land and resources archive · 96 bays, five runs

Send us the room dimensions. We will send back a layout.

Plan drawing, ceiling height and floor loading are enough. You get a bay layout, a capacity estimate and a costed tender specification — usually within two working days.

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