Is drupal able to handle technical data sheets?
According to me you have half answered your question, yes node is what your data holder for the datasheets.
consider nodes as container for your data so to change the way you to present them you can use views module.views module will allow you to present your nodes the way you like also you have option to export your views in different formats.

Here are some modules which can be helpful for exporting your views in different formats


Views PDF
Views data export
Views Excel Export


Update:

For content locking for concurrent content edit
 you can  check Content locking (anti-concurrent editing) contributed module.

Update:

About having different types of datasheets, 


If you are looking are categorizing your nodes/sheets, core shipped taxonomy is there.
If you need to have separate types of sheets in structure, permissions to create/edit/view them, having separate content types will be the solution.