PEM Tool Shelving

In Fall 2020 I was tasked with designing new shelving for a large PEM (clinch fastener) tool inventory. The legacy wooden shelves capped out at 225 tools, which had become a bottleneck for the workshop.

My sheet metal design increased capacity to 1,050 tools — nearly 5x the original — while keeping a comparable footprint. It was my first sheet metal CAD project in SolidWorks, and I leaned hard on the built-in tolerances to make sure the parts would fit together cleanly the first time.

Two custom shelving units were CNC-cut, formed, and welded in-house, then assembled with no revisions. Watching a part go from a SolidWorks model to a finished shelf in the same facility — and seeing the assembly drop into place exactly as drawn — was a formative experience.