Put simply, you can only open 1 drawer at a time. For eg, If you have a full Filing Cabinet, and by accident someone was to open all 4 drawers, the cabinet would tip forward. If the top 3 drawers were opened on a 4 Drawer cabinet, it will fall forward onto the ground. Anti - Tilt locking is a safety precaution which only allows you to open 1 drawer at a time. When 1 drawer is open, the others are locked. This feature is a requirement for workplace health & safety. Check with your in house OH&S officer regarding their regulations for Filing Cabinets.
All of our metal filing cabinets have this feature. There are cheaper cabinets on the market that do not have this feature, but they are simply not as safe, and not recommended for commercial use.
No. It is not a feature or requirement on melamine cabinets as the core weight is vastly different between timber and metal cabinets. All metal cabinets should have anti-tilt locking. The structure of melamine cabinets however are so heavy, that they cannot tilt forward upon opening drawers. Lateral filing cabinets also have this feature as laterals lose depth because of the drawer weight. A standard vertical filing cabinet is approximately 600mm deep on average, where a lateral is only 450mm deep on average, therefore becomes more easy to tip forward.
Our mobile Drawer units have a "5th Wheel" located centrally on the bottom file drawer. This wheel actually stabilizes the cabinet when you open a top drawer. When you open the bottom file drawer, the wheel runs along the floor at the front of the drawer stabilizing the whole cabinet.
