Laminated chipboard load bearing limits.
- Thread starter conny
- Start date
Photo? Description poor.
I'll try to get a photo later. Basically he wants to store small, 250ml, bottles of chemicals on them. He has loaded up a number of them and there is no deflection in the shelf but he just wants to make sure he is not near the limit.
Your bottles weigh 0.25kg and have a diameter of (say) 50mm.
So on a 300mm x 560mm shelf you can put 6 x 11 = 67 bottles
Which in total then weigh 16kg.
Whose weight is distributed over the full surface.
I would have said - only small issue with that weight damging the wood once load in place.
Eample is this also with 15mm wood shelves:
https://www.topregal.co.uk/en/shelv...MI5vmtpKKd9QIVme3tCh1avg_qEAQYASABEgIWdvD_BwE
BUT 15mm is very thin for chipboard.
And might start to sag when it gets damp/old.
18mm would be much much better for they time he puts taller bottles on.
And I would have always gone for Plyboard for longtivity and no issues with getting damp from spillage.
So on a 300mm x 560mm shelf you can put 6 x 11 = 67 bottles
Which in total then weigh 16kg.
Whose weight is distributed over the full surface.
I would have said - only small issue with that weight damging the wood once load in place.
Eample is this also with 15mm wood shelves:
https://www.topregal.co.uk/en/shelv...MI5vmtpKKd9QIVme3tCh1avg_qEAQYASABEgIWdvD_BwE
BUT 15mm is very thin for chipboard.
And might start to sag when it gets damp/old.
18mm would be much much better for they time he puts taller bottles on.
And I would have always gone for Plyboard for longtivity and no issues with getting damp from spillage.
Last edited:
D
Deleted member 174758
If you want to check for bowing, feed the dimensions into an on-line calculator called the Sagulator. Being an American site they refer to MFC (melamine faced chipboard, which is what I think you may be talking about) as "Melamine" and you'll find it down near the bottom of the drop down list. A quick run of that came up with the result that if I loaded an evenly loaded weight of 30kg across each span of a 300mm deep shelf with a 500mm span the deflection would be 2.63mm (or marginally noticeable). Personally I'd reduce the centres to 400mm as that will allow you to put around 45kg between each 400mm span before it becomes noticeable (at 2.5mm sag)
Have same in my garage for last 20 years, holds all my paint , tile cement , tools etc and small Table saw without problem.
Thanks for all the replies guys. Here are the pictures. There may be another half dozen bottles to be put on there, (and certainly no bigger/heavier ones as they are kept in the chemicals cupboard), and possibly a few files on the top shelf but nothing else. Overall length is 4.8metres in two halves of 2.4metres, as you can see by the two closer support rails in the middle.
Had those racks in the centre of his prep room but found it hard to search between the bottles for specific chemicals he needed and was worried about knocking something off.
Got quite a number of them throughout the college in various rooms and store cupboards. They are a very good system.
