In many South African ingot shops, the tail of the casting line is the hardest place to staff: high temperature, fast pace, and endless manual lifting of hot ingots and pushing pallets. Over time, fatigue, turnover and safety risks all increase. That’s why more plants are looking at twin gantry ingot stacking systems — and then hesitate when they see the price: “Is it really right for us?”

Before you decide, ask yourself four quick questions:

1. How many lines and what peak throughput?
   If you run two or more lines and already slow down during peaks because “people can’t keep up with stacking”, your line tail is a real bottleneck.

2. Are ingot dimensions mostly standard?
   The more uniform the ingot type, the easier it is to standardize motions with a gantry system; if you have many sizes, gripper design and recipe switching must be considered early.

3. Do you truly have space for a gantry?
   You need a realistic view of span, X/Y/Z stroke and stacking area. Otherwise, you get a design that works on paper but collides with real equipment or structures.

4. Will you want to link packing and labelling later?
   If future plans include strapping, labelling or conveyor integration, you should reserve I/O and footprint now.

With these points clear, you can better judge whether a vendor’s gantry ingot stacking proposal is just “a robot plus some code” or a solution tailored to your line speed and layout. Vendors like Wuxi Wondery Industry Equipment usually start from your line speed, ingot size and tail layout, then propose a matched cycle-time and stacking concept — this kind of dialogue is worth prioritizing.

If you choose well, you can realistically expect: fewer people in high-heat positions, more stable casting rhythm, fewer unplanned slowdowns, and much lower safety and labour pressure — not just “saving a few operators”.