Alkon Panda Shelving Systems in India: PSB Shelf Bins, ASU Units and Planning a Bay
Alkon Panda Shelving Systems in India get specified most often for the store nobody photographs: the maintenance crib behind a paint shop, the parts counter at an automobile dealership, the spares room of an electronics assembly line, the general store of a machine shop. These rooms share a shape. A few thousand part numbers, most of them small and metallic, a wide spread of physical sizes, and a storekeeper who is judged on how fast he can produce a part number nobody has touched in nine months. The Panda system answers that with roll post shelving and moulded shelf bins designed as one product rather than two. This page works through the parts of the system that decide whether a bay actually works: the PSB bin series and how its numbering maps to shelf depth, the difference between outside, inside and effective height, partitions and partition slots, the transparent T bins, the Panda Bin Stopper, shelf UDL against bay load, how to read an ASU unit composition list, add-on units and roll posts, lockable doors, file and pigeon hole storage, and a method for planning a bay from your own part list rather than from a catalogue picture. Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. stocks the range at Vashi, Navi Mumbai.
What the Panda system actually is, and the stores it suits
The Panda range is two products designed to work as one. On the steel side there is roll post shelving: single piece roll posts, shelves, back panels, kick plates and the assembled ASU shelving units that combine them. On the plastic side there are the PSB Panda shelf bins, moulded in polypropylene copolymer and, in ALKON's own description, designed to fit roll post shelving systems. The catalogue held by Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. covers thirty standard PSB sizes, twelve transparent sizes, one hundred and twenty standard ASU combinations, add-on components, lockable doors, pigeon hole shelving and an ordering chart, all grouped under Panda shelving systems and accessories. ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. describes itself as the manufacturer of the largest range of material handling bins in India; Shreeram is the authorised stockist and supplier.
The stores that suit this system have a particular profile. High part-number count, small to medium item size, moderate weight per item, and a requirement that every part has one address that a new storekeeper can find without asking. That describes the maintenance crib in a Nashik or Taloja process plant, the spares room of a machine shop in Rajkot, the parts department of an automobile dealership in Pune or Hyderabad, and the component store of an electronics unit in the Bengaluru or Sriperumbudur belt. What these stores also have in common is that the part mix changes every year, which is why a modular roll post system beats welded racking or carpentry that cannot be re-pitched.
The system is not right everywhere, and it saves time to say so early. A pharmacy or hospital medicine store has its own pack shapes, expiry discipline and layout logic, and that is covered separately in our page on Panda bins for pharmacy stores rather than repeated here. For a bench or conveyor-side pick face where an operator grabs the same twenty items all shift, the shorter nesting profile of Koala Pick Bins usually beats a long shelf bin. And for anything held at pallet level, in bulk, or handled by a stacker, you are into the territory covered by warehouse storage bins, not shelf bins on a 900 mm wide shelf.
Reading a PSB number: the first digit is your shelf depth
ALKON lists thirty standard Panda shelf bin sizes to suit 300 mm, 400 mm, 450 mm, 500 mm and 600 mm deep shelving. The part code carries that information. PSB 301 to PSB 306 belong to the 300 mm depth family. The 400 mm family runs from PSB 401 to 406, the 450 mm family from PSB 451 to 456, the 500 mm family from PSB 501 to 506 and the 600 mm family from PSB 601 to 606, six sizes in each. You can see the same coding in the Panda Bin Stopper instructions, which name PSB 304, 305, 306, 404, 405, 406, 454, 455, 456, 504, 505, 506, 604, 605 and 606 as the sizes needing two stoppers. The last digit is the size within the family, running from the shallow long bin upwards.
The length of the bin follows the depth family, not the size within it. Every bin in the 300 family listed on the site measures 315 mm long, and the 400 family measures 415 mm. What changes as you climb from 301 to 306 is the width and the height: 100 mm wide and 60 mm high at PSB 301, 100 by 110 at PSB 302, 150 by 110 at PSB 303, 220 by 135 at PSB 304, 300 by 135 at PSB 305 and 300 by 185 at PSB 306. So the depth decision is made once, for the whole bay, and every bin on that bay then inherits it. Get the depth wrong and the bin choice is constrained for the life of the installation.
Note that 315 mm of bin sits on a 300 mm deep shelf. The bin front, with its small moulded handle, therefore sits proud of the shelf edge by 15 mm. Plan your aisle clearance with that overhang included, and remember it repeats on every level. Choose the depth family from the deepest part you genuinely intend to hold at the pick face, not from the average part, but be aware that deeper shelves carry less load: ALKON lists the shelf UDL falling from 90 kg at 300 mm depth to 70 kg at 600 mm. Deeper is not automatically better in a metal store.
Outside, inside and effective height: the three numbers that decide the fit
Every PSB size is published with three sets of figures and they answer three different questions. The outside dimensions tell you what the shelf has to carry and how much frontage the bin eats. The inside dimensions tell you whether the part physically goes in. The effective height tells you how high you can actually fill. Take PSB 301: 315 by 100 by 60 mm outside, 293 by 86 by 55 mm inside, effective height 55 mm. The difference is 22 mm along the length, 14 mm across the width and 5 mm in height, lost to wall thickness, draft and the moulded floor. On the sizes published for this range the effective height equals the inside height, so the full internal depth is usable, but it is the number worth checking on any size you order.
Useful volume is arithmetic on the inside figures, and it is worth writing the list down before you order anything. PSB 301 gives about 1.39 litres, PSB 302 about 2.65, PSB 303 about 4.18, PSB 304 about 8.0, PSB 305 about 10.7 and PSB 306 about 14.9. In the 400 family, PSB 401 at 393 by 86 by 55 mm inside gives about 1.86 litres and PSB 402 about 3.55. That last pair is the interesting comparison. Moving from a 301 to a 401 adds roughly half a litre of capacity for the same 100 mm of shelf frontage, paid for in 100 mm of extra shelf depth. For a store that is short of wall length and long on floor depth, that is a cheap win.
Frontage arithmetic settles how many part numbers a bay can hold, and the Panda shelf is 900 mm wide. A 100 mm wide bin gives nine across, exactly filling the shelf. A 150 mm bin gives six, a 220 mm bin gives four with 20 mm spare, and a 300 mm bin gives three. Do this sum before you commit, because the number of addressed locations per bay, not the litres, is what a spares store runs out of first. The general method for matching a part to a bin volume is set out in our note on how to choose the right storage bin size; the Panda-specific part is that your answer is constrained to the sizes that fit a 900 mm shelf cleanly.
Partitions and partition slots: pick stock in front, reserve behind
Panda bins are supplied with partitions and moulded with slots to take more. ALKON describes the partitions as notched to ensure positive location within the bin, so they do not creep when the bin is pulled. The counts differ by size and they matter. PSB 301 is supplied with three horizontal partitions and has seven slots. PSB 401, being the longer 400 family version of the same profile, is supplied with three partitions and has eleven slots. PSB 302, 303, 304, 305 and 306, and PSB 402 to 406, are each supplied with two partitions and have five slots. In the 450, 500 and 600 mm families every size comes with three partitions: PSB 451, 501 and 601 have eleven slots, and the other sizes have seven. On the solid range the bin is blue and the partition black; on the transparent range both are clear, and ALKON notes that extra partitions can be ordered separately as required.
Understand the geometry before you plan with them. Because the bin's long dimension runs into the shelf depth and the short dimension is the frontage, a horizontal partition runs across the bin and divides it front to back. You are not creating side-by-side lanes; you are creating a front compartment and one or more compartments behind it. For a maintenance spares crib that is exactly the right division. Put the working quantity in the front compartment where a hand reaches it, and the reserve behind the partition where it is visible but not casually picked. The storekeeper then sees a depleted front compartment as a replenishment signal without opening a register.
The limit is compartment width. A PSB 301 has 293 mm of internal length and seven slots, which means the compartments land at roughly 33 to 36 mm intervals if you use every slot. That is excellent for shims, O-rings, split pins, terminal lugs and small electronic components, and useless for anything the size of a bearing box. PSB 401 with eleven slots across 393 mm gives the same fine pitch over a longer bin. The larger sizes with five slots divide a 293 mm length into broader steps that suit two or three related part numbers rather than twelve. Count the slots against the parts you intend to separate before assuming a bin can be subdivided the way you have drawn it.
- PSB 301: seven partition slots, supplied with three partitions
- PSB 401: eleven partition slots, supplied with three partitions
- PSB 302 to 306: five partition slots, supplied with two partitions
- Partitions divide the bin front to back, not side to side
- Extra partitions are a separate order line, so count them with the bins
Transparent T bins: where seeing through the wall pays in a spares store
Twelve of the Panda shelf bin sizes, PSB 301 T to 306 T and PSB 401 T to 406 T, are offered as standard in a transparent version carrying a T suffix (other depths subject to MOQ), and they match the solid bins dimension for dimension. PSB 301 T is 315 by 100 by 60 mm outside, 293 by 86 by 55 mm inside, effective height 55 mm, seven partition slots, twenty four pieces per carton, identical in every figure to PSB 301 except that the bin and the partition are transparent instead of blue and black. That matters practically: you can mix solid and transparent bins in the same run of shelving without any change in pitch, frontage or bin count, and you can switch one location from solid to clear later without disturbing the layout.
In an engineering or dealer parts store the payoff is look-alike separation. Bearings of two different internal diameters, oil seals that differ by two millimetres, high tensile and mild steel fasteners of the same nominal size, sensors from two model years, relays of different ratings: these are the parts that get picked wrong, and the cost is a wasted shift rather than a wasted bin. A clear body lets the storekeeper verify the part face and the remaining quantity from the aisle without pulling the bin, which removes the main opportunity for a bin to be put back in the wrong slot. It also makes a visual reorder level possible without any software.
There are places where the solid blue bin is the better buy. Bays in a foundry, grinding shop or fettling area in Rajkot or Coimbatore collect abrasive dust, and a clear body that is wiped with whatever cloth is nearest will haze faster than a pigmented one. If you write or print directly onto the bin front rather than using a label card, a solid face gives better contrast. And in humid stores in Chennai, Navi Mumbai or Kolkata, condensation and dust on a clear bin can hide as much as it reveals if the cleaning routine is weak. A sensible pattern is transparent for the look-alike families and the fast movers, solid for the rest.
The Panda Bin Stopper: the small part that keeps bins on the shelf
The Panda Bin Stopper, art number PSBS, is a black nylon plastic component that clips onto a Panda bin and forms an integrated rear lip. Once fitted, the bin cannot be pulled straight off the shelf; it has to be tilted upwards first. ALKON describes it as self locking on any size of Panda bin, and it is supplied 100 pieces per carton. It is one of those items that is almost always left out of the first order, then added after the first incident. If you are ordering a multi-bay installation, price it in at the start rather than after somebody drops a bin of circlips across an aisle.
The quantity rule is published and it follows bin width. Use two stoppers on PSB 304, 305, 306, 404, 405, 406, 454, 455, 456, 504, 505, 506, 604, 605 and 606, and one stopper on all other Panda bins. In other words, the three widest sizes in each depth family take two, and everything narrower takes one. Work the count from your bin schedule, not from a round number: an ASU 1 unit carrying 108 PSB 301 bins needs 108 stoppers, which is a little over one carton, while a bay of 15 PSB 306 bins needs 30.
Decide where stoppers belong rather than fitting them everywhere. They earn their place on tall bays where a bin pulled out at 1,900 mm becomes a head height hazard, on bays next to a door or a traffic lane where a trolley knock will walk bins forward, on mezzanine floors that flex, and on any bay holding heavy parts where an overpull is dangerous rather than merely untidy. The trade-off is that a stopper turns bin removal into a deliberate two-hand tilt. If your operators routinely lift a bin off and carry it to a bench, stoppers on those specific locations will be resented and quietly removed, so leave them off there and fit them where bins never leave the shelf.
Shelf UDL and bay load: where metal stores get caught out
ALKON publishes shelf capacity as a uniformly distributed load, measured at L over 180 deflection, which on a 900 mm wide shelf works out to 5 mm at mid span. The figures are 90 kg for the ASUS 300 shelf, 80 kg for ASUS 400, 80 kg for ASUS 450, 75 kg for ASUS 500 and 70 kg for ASUS 600, all 900 mm wide with a 30 mm shelf profile. Two things follow immediately. Capacity falls as depth increases, so a deeper shelf buys volume at the cost of load. And the figure is a distributed load, so a single dense item parked in the middle of a shelf is not the loading condition the number describes.
Convert the shelf figure into a per bin allowance and the picture gets practical. An ASUS 300 shelf carrying nine PSB 301 bins gives about 10 kg per bin at the 90 kg limit. PSB 301 holds about 1.39 litres, so unless you are filling it with something denser than roughly 7 kg per litre you will run out of volume before you run out of load. That is why the small bins feel forgiving: on typical loose fasteners, terminals, bushes and small castings the bin fills up first, and the shelf is never the constraint.
The large bins invert that completely, and this is the easiest overload to miss in a metal store. Three PSB 306 bins on an ASUS 300 shelf means about 30 kg allowance per bin for roughly 14.9 litres of space. Loose steel parts settle at well over 2 kg per litre, so a PSB 306 filled to the brim with small castings, chain, couplings or bearing races will pass the shelf limit long before it looks full. The rule for a metal store is simple: on the 301, 302, 401 and 402 sizes, size by volume; on the 304, 305, 306 and their equivalents in deeper families, size by weight and accept that the bin will look half empty.
Bay capacity is a separate ceiling. ALKON lists a maximum bay UDL of 1000 kg at each of the four standard heights, conditional on a stated number of shelves being bolted: four shelves bolted at 1275 mm, six at 1875 mm, seven at 2175 mm and eight at 2375 mm. Note that a densely shelved bay can exceed the bay limit before any single shelf reaches its own. An ASU 1 unit has thirteen ASUS 300 shelves; at 90 kg each that is a theoretical 1,170 kg, which is above the 1000 kg bay figure. So on a tall, closely pitched bay you cannot load every shelf to its own UDL, and the bolted shelf count is a condition of the rating rather than an assembly preference.
- ASUS 300: 90 kg UDL; ASUS 400: 80 kg; ASUS 450: 80 kg; ASUS 500: 75 kg; ASUS 600: 70 kg
- All shelves 900 mm wide, 30 mm profile, rated at 5 mm deflection
- Maximum bay UDL 1000 kg, with 4, 6, 7 or 8 shelves bolted at 1275, 1875, 2175 and 2375 mm respectively
- Shelf UDL multiplied by shelf count can exceed the bay limit; the bay limit governs
How to read an ASU unit composition list
Every standard Panda shelving unit is published as a composition list, and once you can read one you can read all hundred and twenty. ASU 1 reads: one set of ASUB 123 shelving body, thirteen shelves art number ASUS 300, one kick plate art number ASUKP, nine PSB 301 bins on each shelf, total 108 bins, in a unit 1275 mm high by 900 mm wide. The body code carries the same logic as the roll post codes, so ASUB 123 is 1275 mm high by 300 mm deep and ASUB 124 is 1275 mm by 400 mm. The shelf code carries the depth. The bin line tells you the size and the per-shelf count, and the total is the number you actually have to order.
The arithmetic in these lists is worth doing rather than trusting, and it reveals a consistent rule. Bins occupy one level fewer than the shelf count, because the topmost shelf is a closing surface rather than a bin level. ASU 1: thirteen shelves, nine bins per shelf, total 108, which is twelve levels of nine. ASU 2: nine shelves, nine PSB 302 per shelf, total 72. ASU 3: nine shelves, six PSB 303, total 48. ASU 4: eight shelves, four PSB 304, total 28. ASU 5: eight shelves, three PSB 305, total 21. ASU 6: six shelves, three PSB 306, total 15. ASU 7: thirteen ASUS 400 shelves, nine PSB 401, total 108. ASU 8: nine shelves, nine PSB 402, total 72. The rule holds on all eight, and on every one of the 120 units in the chart.
The ASU 4 footnote is the most instructive line in the whole chart. The standard ASU 4 has no kick plate, eight shelves and 28 bins; if you want a kick plate, it becomes seven shelves and 24 bins. A kick plate therefore costs you one shelf position and one whole level of four bins. That is a real decision, not a detail. A kick plate is worth having where the floor is washed down, where a pallet truck runs close to the bay, or in a monsoon-prone ground floor store in coastal Maharashtra or Gujarat. It is not worth a lost bin level in a clean, dry electronics store where nothing ever touches the base.
Height is the other choice the chart makes for you, and the four standard bay heights are 1275, 1875, 2175 and 2375 mm. A 1275 mm bay is a counter-height or under-mezzanine unit and keeps every bin inside comfortable reach. A 1875 mm bay keeps almost everything reachable for most Indian store staff without a stool, which is why it is the common workhorse. The 2175 and 2375 mm bays buy density at the price of a step platform, so put slow-moving and reserve stock on the top two levels there and keep the fast movers between thigh and shoulder height. Check the reach of the shortest person who will work that bay daily before you order the tallest option.
Add-on units, roll posts and extended back panels
The Panda shelving system is designed to be extended rather than repeated, and understanding that before the first order is where the money is. ALKON's guidance is straightforward. For two units back to back, order one standard unit of the configuration you want, then order only roll posts, shelves and a kick plate for the second, saving the back panels entirely. For two units side by side, order one standard unit, then for the adjacent bay order only an extended back panel and a single roll post along with shelves and kick plate, saving one roll post. As more bays join into a wall, or into an aisle with bays back to back and side by side, the cost per addressed location keeps falling.
The component codes follow the same height and depth pattern as the rest of the system. Single piece roll posts are listed as ASURP followed by height and depth: ASURP 123 is 1275 by 300 mm, ASURP 126 is 1275 by 600 mm, ASURP 1845 is 1875 by 450 mm, and the series continues through 2175 and 2375 mm heights across all five depths, twenty combinations in all. Extended back panels come as ASUEBP 1275, 1875, 2175 and 2375, each supplied as two pieces. What is easy to miss is that the fastening sets are a separate line: ASUBN is an M6 by 12 mm pan head nut and bolt set, and ALKON specifies 28 sets for the 1275 panel, 42 for 1875, 50 for 2175 and 56 for 2375.
The planning consequence is that you have to decide the final shape of the installation before the first purchase order, not after the first bay is standing. If you order three identical standard units and then decide to butt them together, you have already paid for roll posts and back panels you do not need. Draw the wall or the aisle first, mark which bays are standard and which are add-ons, and count roll posts, extended back panels and ASUBN sets off that drawing. For larger auto component and electrical stores in the Delhi NCR and Ahmedabad belts where a store is built out over two or three financial years, keep that drawing as a live document so that next year's add-on order matches this year's build.
Lockable doors, and what the lintels cost you
Lockable doors for Panda shelving are available in two heights only: ASUD 1275 and ASUD 1875, each supplied as a door set with lintel including sixteen sets of bolts and nuts. They are powder coated in the same colour as the shelves and roll posts so the run looks uniform, they are modular and can be added to shelving already standing, and they can be used on add-on units including back to back arrangements. For a dealer parts department in Bengaluru or Hyderabad holding injectors, ECUs, sensors, carbide inserts or calibration masters, a lockable bay inside the same shelving run avoids buying a separate almirah and keeps those parts in the same addressing scheme as everything else.
Two constraints govern the layout and both need to be settled before you allocate part numbers to bays. First, doors can only be fitted on every alternate bay of a shelving run. In a wall of six bays you can therefore lock three, and they will be alternating, so the controlled items have to be planned into those specific positions rather than wherever they happen to land. Second, doors exist at 1275 and 1875 mm only, so any bay that must lock has to be built at one of those two heights. If you were planning a 2175 mm wall for density, the locked portion of it will have to step down.
The third effect is on usable height, and it is the one people discover after installation. The door is pivoted on two lintels: the top lintel is mounted in line with the top shelf and the bottom lintel sits at the base level of the unit. Both intrude into the opening, so the usable height inside a doored bay is less than the same bay without doors. Count your bin levels after the doors are in the specification, not before, and check the lowest level in particular, because the bottom lintel is the one that quietly removes a row. As always, the published ordering chart carries the standard door set configurations and should be treated as the authority over any figure worked out on site.
Pigeon hole shelving and file storage on the same system
Panda Pigeon Hole Shelving Systems are built on the standard 300 mm and 400 mm deep roll post shelving, using special shelves, fixed partitions and bin fronts instead of moulded bins. The shelves are ASUS 300 PH and ASUS 400 PH, carrying the same UDL as their standard equivalents at 90 kg and 80 kg. The fixed partitions are ASUSFP 300 PH and ASUSFP 400 PH, made from 0.8 mm CRCA steel powder coated in light grey RAL 7035. They lodge into slots at the lower end of the top shelf and on the shelf base at the same time, so they cannot be dislodged easily and the compartment boundaries stay where you put them.
The dimensions that decide whether pigeon holes suit your parts are the partition height of 295 mm and the resulting usable area between two shelves of 270 mm. Bin fronts come in two heights, ASUBF 85 at 85 mm high by 900 mm wide and ASUBF 135 at 135 mm high by 900 mm wide, in the same 0.8 mm CRCA steel and RAL 7035 finish. Usefully, ALKON states these bin fronts can be used with regular shelving systems as well as with pigeon hole shelves, which means you can add a retaining lip to an ordinary shelf holding loose items without converting the whole bay.
In an engineering or maintenance store, pigeon holes win where a bin is the wrong container rather than the wrong size. Coiled V-belts and hose lengths, gasket sets that must stay flat, sheet shims, brake discs and pads, boxed kits that already have their own packaging, and fixed tooling locations all sit better in an open compartment than inside a plastic bin. What you give up is the ability to lift the location out and carry it to the bench, and the flexibility of a re-positionable partition. The same shelving also takes box files, and ALKON states that 30 box files can be stored in a 1275 mm system, 40 in a 1875 mm system and 50 in a 2175 mm system, which is a tidy way to keep OEM manuals, drawings and preventive maintenance records in the same run as the spares they describe.
Planning a bay from your own part list, and reading the ordering chart
The method is short and it is the same whether you are fitting one bay or twenty. Start from the part list, not the catalogue. Take your fast-moving part numbers, measure the three most awkward of them, and set the depth family from the deepest part you will genuinely hold at the pick face. Choose bin sizes against inside dimensions, then divide 900 by the bin width to get bins per shelf. Multiply by the number of bin levels, which is shelf count minus one, to get locations per bay. Check the loaded weight per shelf against the ASUS UDL for that depth, and the loaded weight of the whole bay against the 1000 kg bay figure. Only then look up the matching ASU code on the ordering chart.
A worked example makes the sequence concrete, and the numbers below are an illustration rather than a recommendation. Suppose a maintenance store has 300 fast part numbers, mostly fasteners, seals, bushes, terminals and small electrical spares, none deeper than 250 mm. The 300 mm depth family is enough. Most parts suit a PSB 301, so an ASU 1 configuration gives 108 locations per bay on a footprint of 900 by 300 mm, which is 0.27 square metres of floor for 108 addresses. Three such bays give 324 locations against the 300 part numbers, leaving room to grow. Around thirty bulkier items go into a fourth bay of PSB 304 and PSB 305 bins, sized on weight rather than volume, and the box files move onto the same run.
Turn that into a purchase list with the packing data, because bins are bulky and light and freight is charged on volume. PSB 301 is packed 24 pieces per carton at 0.0530 CBM, so 108 bins is four and a half cartons; ordering five gives you 120 bins and a dozen spares, which is sensible because a cracked bin should be replaced rather than tolerated. PSB 303 is 12 per carton, and PSB 305 and 306 are 6 per carton at 0.0828 and 0.1082 CBM, so each large bin carries far more freight volume than each small one. Order in carton multiples, and consolidate shipments if you are fitting out branches across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka or Tamil Nadu at the same time.
On supply, ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. manufactures the range and Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. has been an authorised stockist and supplier for over thirty years, working from Shop-1, Gagangiri Chs, Sector 17, Vashi, Navi Mumbai 400703. Being in Navi Mumbai means straightforward same-city and MMR delivery and easy road dispatch to Pune, Nashik and the rest of Maharashtra, with regular movement to Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, West Bengal and the Delhi NCR industrial belts. If you are reorganising rather than building from scratch, the companion note on organising a maintenance spares store covers the stock discipline side; this page covers the hardware. Send your part list and bay dimensions to enquiry@shreeram-metafusion.com, call 93266 29967 or 98201 01937, or visit the Vashi shop between 10:00 and 19:00, Monday to Saturday.
- Measure the three deepest and three heaviest parts before choosing a depth family
- Divide 900 by bin width for bins per shelf; use shelf count minus one for bin levels
- Check shelf UDL for that depth, then the 1000 kg bay limit, before finalising bin sizes
- Add partitions, bin stoppers, kick plates and ASUBN fastener sets as separate lines
- Fix the final wall or aisle shape before the first order so add-on savings are available
- Order bins in carton multiples: 24, 12 or 6 pieces per carton depending on size
Frequently asked questions
What does the number in a PSB part code tell me?
The first digit or digits identify the shelf depth the bin is designed for, and the last digit is the size within that family. ALKON lists thirty standard Panda shelf bin sizes to suit 300 mm, 400 mm, 450 mm, 500 mm and 600 mm deep shelving, so PSB 301 to 306 belong to the 300 mm family, the 400 series to 400 mm deep shelving, and a 45 prefix denotes 450 mm. The bin length follows the family, 315 mm in the 300 family and 415 mm in the 400 family, while width and height change as the size number climbs. Confirm the exact figures for any size against the published ordering chart before ordering.
What is the difference between outside, inside and effective height?
Outside dimensions tell you what the shelf carries and how much of the 900 mm frontage the bin uses, inside dimensions tell you whether the part physically goes in, and effective height tells you how high the bin can actually be filled. On PSB 301 the outside is 315 by 100 by 60 mm, the inside 293 by 86 by 55 mm and the effective height 55 mm, so you lose 22 mm of length, 14 mm of width and 5 mm of height to wall thickness, draft and the moulded floor. On the published sizes the effective height matches the inside height. Plan the shelf from the outside figures and the part fit from the inside ones; mixing the two is the commonest specification error.
How many Panda bins fit on one shelf and one ASU bay?
The Panda shelf is 900 mm wide, so divide 900 by the bin width. A 100 mm wide bin such as PSB 301, 302, 401 or 402 gives nine per shelf, a 150 mm bin such as PSB 303 gives six, a 220 mm bin such as PSB 304 gives four with 20 mm to spare, and a 300 mm bin such as PSB 305 or 306 gives three. For the bay, bins occupy one level fewer than the shelf count because the topmost shelf is a closing surface. That is why ASU 1, with thirteen shelves and nine bins per shelf, totals 108 bins rather than 117, and why ASU 6, with six shelves and three bins per shelf, totals 15.
Do I need Panda Bin Stoppers, and how many per bin?
The Panda Bin Stopper, art number PSBS, is a black nylon component that clips onto the bin and forms an integrated rear lip so the bin cannot be pulled off the shelf unless it is tilted upwards. ALKON specifies two stoppers for PSB 304, 305, 306, 404, 405, 406, 454, 455, 456, 504, 505, 506, 604, 605 and 606, and one stopper for all other Panda bins. They are worth fitting on tall bays, on bays beside doors or traffic lanes, on mezzanine floors and on any bay holding heavy parts. Leave them off locations where operators routinely lift the bin and carry it to a bench, since a stopper makes removal a deliberate two-hand action.
How much weight can a Panda shelf carry?
ALKON publishes uniformly distributed load figures measured at 5 mm deflection on the 900 mm span: 90 kg for the ASUS 300 shelf, 80 kg for ASUS 400 and ASUS 450, 75 kg for ASUS 500 and 70 kg for ASUS 600. Divide the figure by the bins on that shelf to get a per bin allowance. Nine PSB 301 bins on an ASUS 300 shelf means about 10 kg each, which loose fasteners will rarely reach. Three PSB 306 bins on the same shelf means about 30 kg each for roughly 14.9 litres of space, which dense metal parts will exceed long before the bin looks full. Separately, the maximum bay UDL is listed as 1000 kg, subject to four, six, seven or eight shelves being bolted at the 1275, 1875, 2175 and 2375 mm heights.
Can lockable doors be added to a Panda bay I already have?
Yes. ALKON lists the doors as modular and able to be added to existing shelving, supplied as ASUD 1275 and ASUD 1875 door sets with lintel including sixteen sets of bolts and nuts, powder coated to match the shelves and roll posts. Two constraints apply. Doors fit only on every alternate bay of a run, so in a six bay wall you can lock three and they alternate, which means the controlled part numbers must be planned into those positions. And doors exist only in the 1275 and 1875 mm heights, so a taller wall has to step down where it locks. The two lintels also reduce the usable height inside the bay, so recount your bin levels once doors are in the specification.
When should I use pigeon hole shelving instead of PSB bins?
Use pigeon holes when the item is the wrong shape for a container rather than the wrong size for one. Coiled belts, hose lengths, flat gasket sets, sheet shims, boxed kits with their own packaging and fixed tooling locations all sit better in an open compartment. Panda Pigeon Hole Shelving is built on the standard 300 mm and 400 mm deep roll post shelving with special shelves ASUS 300 PH and ASUS 400 PH, fixed partitions ASUSFP 300 PH and ASUSFP 400 PH in 0.8 mm CRCA steel finished light grey RAL 7035, and bin fronts ASUBF 85 and ASUBF 135. The partition height is 295 mm and the usable area between two shelves is 270 mm. What you lose is the ability to carry a location to the bench.
What should I send you to get the right ASU configuration quoted?
Send four things. First, the number of fast-moving part numbers you want at the pick face, since that decides how many addressed locations you need. Second, the length, width and height of your three deepest and three heaviest parts, which sets the depth family and warns us where weight rather than volume will govern. Third, the clear wall length, ceiling height and aisle width available, plus whether a stool or step platform is acceptable. Fourth, whether any part of the run must lock, because that constrains the bay height to 1275 or 1875 mm and to alternate bays. Email enquiry@shreeram-metafusion.com or call 93266 29967 or 98201 01937, and ask which sizes are held against which are ordered in.
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