Locker (cabinet) - General Description and Characteristics

General Description and Characteristics

Lockers are normally quite narrow, of varying heights and tier arrangements. Width and depth usually conform to standard measurements, although non-standard sizes are occasionally found. Public places with lockers often contain large numbers of them, such as in a school. They are usually made of painted sheet metal which are known as lockers

The characteristics that usually distinguish them from other types of cabinet or cupboard or storage container are:

• They are usually equipped with a lock, or at least a facility for padlocking (occasionally both).
• They are usually intended for use in public places, and intended for the short- or long-term private use of individuals for storing clothing or other personal items. Users may rent a locker for a single use or for a period of time for repeated use. Some lockers are offered as a free service to people partaking of certain activities that require the safekeeping of personal items.
• There are usually but not always several of them joined together.

Lockers are usually physically joined together side by side in banks, and are commonly made from steel, although wood, laminate, and plastic are other materials sometimes found. Steel lockers which are banked together share side walls, and are constructed by starting with a complete locker; further lockers may then be adding by constructing the floor, roof, rear wall, door, and just one extra side wall, the existing side wall of the previous locker serving as the other side wall of the new one. The walls, floors, and roof of lockers may be either riveted together (the more traditional method) or, more recently, welded together.

Locker doors usually have some kind of ventilation to provide for the flow of air to aid in cleanliness. These vents usually take the form of a series of horizontal angled slats at the top and bottom of the door, although sometimes parallel rows of small square or rectangular holes are found instead, running up and down the door. Less often, the side or rear walls may also have similar ventilation.

Locker doors usually have door stiffeners fixed vertically to the inside of the door, in the form of a metal plate welded to the inner surface, and protruding outward a fraction of an inch, thus adding to the robustness of the door and making it harder to force open.

Lockers are often manufactured by the same companies who produce filing cabinets, stationery cabinets (occasionally wrongly referred to as lockers, steel shelving, and other products made from sheet steel.