When installing your bollards, plan your escape. Or do you think these are removable bollards?

From Andrew Jordan of Rack Protect:

Rack Armor may look like a piece of plastic tube with foam stuck in it, but the more you learn about the physics of it the more impressed you will be.

1. It's round. When you try to hit it with a fork it's difficult. The fork tends to judder on the carriage and slide away.

2. The point impact. When forks hit a solid object like rack they do a lot of damage.This is because all the weight of the truck, is concentrated into one little area, the tip of the fork. Assuming 4,000 lbs concentrated into a 6" x 1/8" Tip it equals 3,000 lbs per square inch. To give a comparison your bedroom floor is 40 lbs per square foot and above ground swimming pool is 500 lbs per square foot. So it really is a tremendous force. What Rack Armor does is un concentrate this force again. By spreading out the force over the entire length of the Hard Outer Shell, it makes a small impact spread out and lessen into a larger diffused impact. From 1/8" to 24" is a 1 to 192 diffusion ratio, or to put it another way it increases the small area by 19,000%

imagine a shovel hitting something with the pointed end. Very hard, painful and all the force is concentrated in that small lip. Now take that same shovel and hit something with the flat part, same energy and force but much less damage.

That is what Rack Armor does with impacts, it spreads them out along the surface of the outer shell making them much less harmful.

3. By bending the shell and allowing the motion to continue, it allows the impact to slow and stop. Compare a mountainside road truck run out, with the bed of gravel to the truck hitting a cement wall. With the gravel the truck continues but slowly decelerates and comes to a stop with no damage. With a cement wall, all the kinetic energy is released into metal deformation,heat and complete damage. The combination of the outer shell slowly bending and the foam absorbing is like the bed of gravel

Finally any remaining energy is absorbed into the foam. Pictures show the Rack Armor being pushed back as far as 1" on the column but not transferring the impact to the column.

Most of our documentation and testing, shows a fork impacting the Rack Armor repeatedly in the same place at a simulated 4 mph. This is not a real life situation, it is much harsher. Most real life bumps occur at 2-3 mph with a loaded pallet. Usually when the driver is trying to put away a pallet. In checking with customers who have had Rack Armor for some time they usually do not have any comments. This is because it is doing it's job 24/7. If it was not we would be hearing all manner of complaints. We have received no complaints from any of our customers, about the performance of the Rack Armor.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

The following section lists frequently asked questions relating to Protect-it MAXI™ structural column guards. If you have any further questions then please don't hesitate to contact us.

How does Protect-it MAXI™ work?


Protect-it MAXI™ column protection combines clever design, Computer Aided Engineering and advanced thermoplastic materials to deliver a product that can absorb large impacts. Each product has an outer wall that is integrally moulded to a series of curved “spring like” energy absorbers at the front and sides to provide two levels of protection for columns.
Under light to moderate impacts the outer wall deforms to resist the impact before returning to its original shape.
Under higher impacts the outer wall deflects even more, contacting the energy absorbers and delivering increased impact absorption.
This staged response makes the product flexible enough to accommodate everyday knocks and bumps yet robust enough to withstand substantial forklift impacts.

What performance testing has been done?


The impact absorption technology used on Protect-it MAXI™ has been proven on other Protect-it™ products over many years throughout Europe, South Africa, Asia, Australia and Nth America.
We conducted extensive Finite Element Analysis on Protect-it MAXI™ during the product development process to replicate real life impact performance and assess the performance limits.
In summary;
With Protect-it MAXI™ installed on a 100UC_15 (4”) column no column damage evident after a 2.7 ton forklift impact at 2km/hour*.
With Protect-it MAXI™ installed on a 200UC_59 (8”) no column damage evident after a 2.7 ton forklift impact at 6km/hour*.
Without Protect-it MAXI™ installed, there would be permanent column damage.
*Refer to the literature section of this website for a full technical report and real life test videos.

Is Protect-it MAXI™ cost effective?


Protect-it MAXI™ column protectors are the most cost effective structural column protector is the world. This is because there are actually three costs to consider when purchasing a column protector:
Initial purchase cost- Protect-it MAXI™ is one of lowest priced structural column protectors in the world.
Installation cost- Installation takes minutes with no additional fasteners, so labour cost is negligible.
Replacement cost is a fraction of our competitors. Impact damage typically occurs in a small area only. Protect-it MAXI™ column guards are designed so that damaged units can be replaced individually and far more cost effectively than large two piece products offered by competitors.

To maintain optimum impact performance, we recommend our products for indoor applications only.

You may want to print this picture to facilitate installation of your Protect-it™ MAXI column protectors.

All impact protection devices deform in order to absorbimpact. Under severe impact, any protective devise can deform irreversily or even fracture to protect the column. The unique design of Protect-it™ MAXI allows the easy replacement of an individual bumper, not the entire column unit. Remove linking pins and replace any deformed bumper, then replace the pins.

Rack Armor brand pallet rack protectors fit all 3" legs of pallet rack uprights. Whether it's roll formed or structural steel; tear drop, keystone, or any style.

Feel free to copy the installation instructions for Rack Armor from Rack Protect.

Check out Indoff's Planters at http://planters.indoff.com/Catalog.

What a great way to be a protector of our environment, as well as, the columns, racks, docks, and equipent around us. 

Modular Rail industrial guard rail features:

• 100% lift out rail design allows access to areas quickly and safely
• 42" double rail meets OSHA guidelines for rail protection
• Simple to install or cut to custom sizes in the field
• Safety yellow powder coat finish
• Posts are capped
• 9/16" mounting holes in baseplate
• Optional floor rail available