Rapistan Corporation

Howard A Zollinger

LeRoy Lubbers

William K Stubbs

A warehouse storage system comprises an array of storage bins arranged in vertical tiers with the tiers arranged in rows and having aisles between the rows. A mobile vertical lift moves across the ends of the aisles and carries thereon a mobile transfer vehicle which can be elevated by the mobile vertical lift to any desired storage level. The self-powered mobile transfer vehicle is adapted to be automatically dispatched from the mobile vertical lift at a predetermined aisle and level and is programmable to travel via tracks along the aisle to a predetermined bin location, and extend retrieving mechanism from the vehicle for transferring the pallet load between the mobile transfer vehicle and the storage bin.

Multi-aisle warehouse system with mobile lift having control means for

A warehousing system comprises an array of storage bins arranged in vertical tiers with the tiers arranged in rows having access aisles extending along the rows. A mobile vertical life moves along the ends of the aisles and carries thereon a mobile transfer vehicle which can be elevated by the mobile vertical lift to any desired storage level and discharged therefrom onto rails extending along each storage level of each access aisle. The self-powered mobile transfer vehicle includes forks for transferring loads between the vehicle and a storage bin. At least one of the transfer vehicles in the system is a tier picking vehicle including a vacuum operated picking head mounted to be lowered and raised between the picking vehicle and a make-up transfer vehicle below the picking vehicle. In one embodiment, the vacuum picking head is mounted on extensible arms of the tier picking vehicle and can be extended into a storage bin such that the tiers of articles picked directly from a palletized load in a storage location can be transferred to the make-up transfer vehicle in the same aisle and positioned below and in alignment with the picking vehicle.

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Ada, MI, United States of America

Howard A Zollinger