Is your tempering line waiting on glass?
In a high-volume fabrication plant, the bottleneck isn't always the furnace speed—it's the chaotic transfer of lites between the cutting table and the washer. Stop risking edge chips on manual carts. Streamline your WIP flow with high-density, sequential sorting designed specifically for Insulated Glass (IG) and tempering workflows.
If you are running a custom glass fabrication facility—producing anything from heavy architectural laminated glass to custom shower doors—you know that "storage" is the wrong word. You don't store glass; you flow it.
The Assembly Line Harp Cart (industry-standard name: Harp Rack) is not a warehouse shelf. It is a dynamic Work-in-Progress (WIP) tool designed to bridge the gap between your CNC cutting table and your IGU line or tempering furnace. When you use generic A-frames for WIP, you face a critical issue: Pick Accessibility. To get to the third lite in a stack, you have to move the first two. This double-handling is the #1 cause of scratches and operator injury.
The numbered slot system allows for precise sequencing of lites for IGU pairing.
In modern architectural glass production, Soft Coat Low-E glass is notoriously fragile before it is sealed into an IGU. A standard steel rack or a wood buck is a disaster waiting to happen. The Assembly Line Harp Cart utilizes a system of tensioned steel wires encased in a heavy-duty PVC casing.
This design serves two critical functions specific to our industry:
PVC-coated dividers eliminate metal-to-glass contact, preserving soft coats.
A common headache in custom fabrication is the mix of sizes. You might have a 72" x 84" patio door lite followed immediately by a 12" x 84" sidelite. On traditional roller conveyors or generic carts, that narrow, tall piece is unstable. It tends to twist or fall through gaps in the rollers.
Our engineering team addresses this with a specialized base design. While many competitors use widely spaced rollers, our high-density nylon roller system or Full Base options ensure that even narrow strips of glass maintain three points of contact at the bottom. This stability is crucial when the cart is being pushed over expansion joints in your factory floor.
Loading a harp rack glass trolley requires force. When an operator pushes a heavy 1/2" (12mm) lite into the rack, the laws of physics dictate that a cart on wheels will roll away. This creates a safety hazard and frustration for the worker.
We solved this with a Foot-Actuated Lifting Mechanism. Instead of just locking the casters (which can still slide), this lever system physically lifts the rack off its wheels and anchors it onto a solid rubber pad. The cart becomes an immoveable station during loading/unloading, then instantly mobile again for transport to the tempering furnace.
The foot-pedal mechanism anchors the cart firmly during the loading process.
Many glass machinery suppliers ship fully welded racks, which means you are paying to ship mostly air inside a container. For our international clients, shipping costs can kill the ROI of new equipment.
We utilize a Knock-Down (Bolt-Together) Design. The base, uprights, and grid sections are modular. We can fit dozens of these units into a standard container using flat-pack methods. Once they arrive at your facility, they can be assembled with standard tools. The rigidity is ensured by high-tensile bolts, rivaling any welded structure but with significantly lower freight costs.
Flat-pack shipping allows us to maximize container density and reduce your landed cost.
| Q: What is the slot width on your standard Harp Rack? | We offer customization, but the standard is typically designed to accommodate glass up to 1/2" (12mm) thick easily. For IGU spacing (where you need to store sealed units), we can fabricate wider slots (e.g., 1 inch or larger) to fit the glass + spacer depth. |
| Q: Can this cart handle the heat near a tempering furnace? | Yes. The frame is Q235A Carbon Steel with an electrostatic powder coating. However, the PVC casing on the rods is designed for cold/warm zones (cutting, grinding, washing, pre-tempering). It should not be placed inside the oven or used for glass immediately exiting the quench at high temperatures. |
| Q: Does the base prevent edge chipping? | Absolutely. We use either high-density nylon rollers or a slotted HDPE/PVB base. This provides a "soft" landing for the bottom edge of the glass, which is the most vulnerable point for stress cracks and chips during handling. |
| Q: What is the weight capacity? | Our standard models are rated for a dynamic load of approximately 3,300 lbs (1500kg). The heavy-duty polyurethane casters are selected specifically to handle the density of glass without developing flat spots. |
| Q: How do I organize pairs for IGU production? | The base of the rack features a numbered strip (e.g., 1-40). This allows the CNC operator to place the inner lite in slot #1 and the outer lite in slot #2, ensuring they remain paired and sequenced perfectly when they arrive at the washing and assembly station. |
