Inclined lift doors: new solution

Meiller has developed a new solution for the landing doors of inclined lifts: the so-called “active” landing door.

An inclined lift is by definition a passenger and cargo lift with inclined track erected to overcome a difference in height. According to European standards, the inclined lift is a special lift instance, whose guide rails are inclined by more than 15° to the vertical.

Inclined lifts in the meaning of the Lift Directive are dealt with in EN 81-22. As a result – like all components – the landing and car doors must also correspond to the EN 81 series.

Inclined lifts are built above all in mountainous areas or also on slopes in order to convey people or goods effortlessly to the buildings on the slope or mountain. They often serve hotels, boarding houses or also private residential buildings. Inclined lifts, just like their vertical counterparts, have rails, ropes, drives, cars, etc. and naturally also car and landing doors.

Simple solution

There are two kinds of entries to inclined lifts. On the one hand, at the front: here the car door travels vertically into the landing door. Mechanical coupling of both doors is no problem.

On the other hand, laterally: here the car door travels obliquely – at a particular angle – into the landing door. The otherwise customary mechanical coupling of landing and car doors is problematic in this constellation. A catch / skate has to be at an angle to the hook bolt rollers to travel between them and be able to move them subsequently, which requires a very elaborate technical solution.

Meiller has found a much simpler solution for this: so-called "active" landing doors. These landing doors have their own drive with motor, transformer and above all an innovative, intelligent controller. An additional electric lock is also present for safety reasons.

Absolutely synchronous door travel

Thanks to this intelligence, the landing and car doors can be fitted with an optical coupling, resulting in absolutely synchronous door travel. The car door assumes the role of master here while the landing door acts as slave.

If one of the doors blocks opening or closing, it reverses independently. This reversing is transmitted via coupling (IRcom sensor) to the other door, ensuring it reacts simultaneously and synchronously.

Since the driven landing doors do not have their own closing weight, the requirement of EN 81 (landing doors have to be self-closing) is realised via an automatic final timer function. These doors then need to have an emergency power supply (e.g. UPS) to ensure self-closing and locking of the doors is guaranteed.

The product range of driven "active" landing doors consists of two-leaf centrally opening, two-leaf side-opening doors and four-part centrally opening doors and is already available. These doors can be configured with almost any door leaves, sills and frame designs.

Peter Will
The author is Head of Product Management at Meiller

More information: meiller-aufzugtueren.de