SPEEDER-system: the multiple-level miniload

Handling system manufacturers are constantly investing in product development to make their systems and solutions faster, lighter and cheaper. Although incremental improvements are always welcome, sometimes it takes ‘blue sky thinking’ to innovate in a way that has real impact. That was certainly the story behind the development of KNAPP’s Speeder-System automatic storage and retrieval system (ASRS).

The design team in KNAPP’s Austrian HQ faced a constant dilemma. Achieving greater performance from conventional miniload cranes required faster speeds with consequently higher acceleration and deceleration rates. These tend to result in increased wear and tear, higher maintenance demands and longer periods of downtime, and these costly penalties often outweigh the theoretical gains in performance.

The breakthrough came through the idea of designing an ASRS with miniload cranes on multiple levels, operating independently of each other. This was revolutionary because, by reducing the size and weight of the cranes, higher rates of acceleration and deceleration were possible but without the maintenance needs of larger and heavier cranes. The resulting product – Speeder-System – is a modular solution that achieves higher throughput but with a storage density similar to other ASRS concepts. Speeder-System also features KNAPP’s Energy Management Software to minimise power consumption, cutting operational costs quite dramatically.

Each crane aisle is served by integrated load lifts that can transfer totes vertically between the various ASRS levels and feed loads to picking or P&D stations, thereby interfacing with a wide range of picking stations or transport options.