Why the #$!@ is My Roll Up Door Breaking All the Time?
Meet Bob.
Bob is a maintenance manager at a brand new widget factory, Awesome Widgets. They make more widgets in less time than any other widget manufacturer – so materials are constantly trucked in, and manufactured products are constantly trucked out. Awesome Widgets is based in the northeast – with snowy winters and hot summers. Because of this, and for security reasons, they close their rolling steel doors after every truck enters or exits the facility.
Six months in, Bob is frustrated. He’s had to pay for several service calls because parts on the overhead roll up doors at the facility keep malfunctioning, and now the spring that drives the overhead coiling door open and closed has snapped on one of his most-used openings. Bob is convinced that rolling steel doors are pieces of garbage.
Bob is wrong.
Bob reached out to a high speed roll up door company to find what he can do to fix his situation.
He found out it’s all about choosing the right product for the job. Just like you wouldn’t enter your four-cylinder Ford Taurus into the Indy 500, you can’t expect a standard rolling steel door to do the job of high performance or high speed roll up doors.
To make sure you have the right door for the job, it needs to:
- Identify what separates a high performance rolling steel door from a traditional rolling steel door.
- Identify when you should use a high performance rolling steel door.
- Highlight the challenges that arise if a standard door is used in place of a high performance one.
In short, you’ll want it to be a no brainer for you to determine when high performance overhead doors or high speed roll up doors are what you need. When it comes to high performance overhead door companies, Bob found out a good overhead rolling door company with a proven track record, long history of high quality and a top staff of professionals will help walk him through what he needs and what overhead door product is best for him.
What is a High Performance Overhead Door?
The Door and Access Systems Manufacturers Association (DASMA) defines high performance doors as follows:
A power-operated rolling, folding or sliding non-residential door, generally characterized by either 100 or more cycles per day or 20 or more inches per second opening speed, and typically made-to-order and/or designed for higher durability, and/or designed to break away due to equipment impact.
Breaking it down, the industry definition of high performance doors states that they:
- must be power operated
- are typically used in a non-residential setting
- need to cycle (open and close) a lot or cycle quickly
- are typically designed for durability and/or quick repair
This is a great general definition, but there are a lot of and/ors that can lead to ambiguity. So if you have an overhead coiling door opening that meets the general definition of cycling 100+ times a day or that you need to open quickly, you know you need a high performance door. But what kind? For true high use openings, you need a high performance door that has ALL of the following attributes:
Attributes of a High Performance Overhead Door:
Overhead Door Speed
Let’s say our Awesome Widgets factory has a standard rolling steel door that is 20 feet tall.
Standard Rolling Service Door
Height = 240 inches
Opening speed = 8 inches per second
Door opens in 30 seconds
High Performance Rolling Door
Height = 240 inches
Opening speed = 24 inches per seconds
Door opens in 10 seconds
SAVINGS = 20 seconds EVERY TIME the door opens
So, taking that 20 second saving and extrapolating that across 100 cycles per day in a 24/365 operation, you end up with a total savings of
202 hours per year. That's crazy, right? But here's the flip side - once you get past a certain speed, speed starts to matter less, but the cost can go way up. DASMA defines a high speed door as one that opens at a speed of at least 32 inches per second, and some can go faster. That said, the cost of some high speed roll up doors can be more than double the cost of a high performance product that opens at speeds of 24 inches per second. You need to consider if the extra cost is worth it for a commercial overhead door that can open in six seconds rather than 10.
Roll Up Door Activation Options
Speed is important for high speed roll up doors, but it’s not the only feature that will improve operation. When and how the high performance roll up door activate to open is crucial to an efficient operation. Imagine a forklift with five-foot forks driving up to a roll up door, but the floor loop that activates opening was mistakenly laid only seven feet from the door. This means that the forklift has to drive over the loop and slow down or even stop to wait for the overhead garage door to open. No matter how fast the overhead door can open, time is still wasted.
If that floor loop was installed twenty feet away, the experience could be flawless. Anyone with a high-use opening should look for high speed roll up doors that are easily compatible with a wide variety of activation devices. In fact, one of the most popular activation options today is a camera that can be programmed to activate the overhead coiling door at the right time, without the requirement for any additional key cards, floor loops, and the like.
Overhead Rolling Door Cycles
The term cycle means one full opening and closing of the overhead rolling door – going from fully closed, to fully open, and back again. Looking back to the DASMA definition of high performance doors, it states that the high performance overhead door must meet the 100 cycles per day mark. Easy, right?
Except that cycles of the overhead door aren’t always spread out over the entire day. There is a significant difference in wear (and subsequently in construction requirements) for a coiling door that will cycle 100 times in one hour vs. one that will cycle four times each hour for 24 hours.
Figuring out the right kind of cycle life – meaning maximum cycles expected during peak periods, not just total cycles, is critical to selecting the right type of high performance overhead door.
Roll Up Garage Door Durability
A true high performance rolling door must be built for durability from the bottom up. There is a myth circulating in the industry that springs = cycle life. If everything about your high performance garage door is the same as a standard service door, but you put high cycle springs on it, you have a high-cycle-spring door – not a high performance coiling door. In fact, the gold standard for high performance rolling doors is actually a springless overhead door design. Springs inevitably wear out and need to be replaced, causing downtime and maintenance fees.
So what else needs to be built for high performance? The operator, for one, needs to be able to handle the maximum number of cycles in the minimum amount of time you expect to use it. A direct drive overhead door operator is a good investment, as there are no chains or sprockets to wear out. And it should feature a soft start and stop. On open, the speed of a best-in-class, high performance roll up door should start opening slow, ramp up in the middle, and then slow down before reaching the fully open position. Why? To reduce wear and tear on all rolling door components, but especially the operator. The guides (metal channels that hold the curtain in) also need to be robust enough to handle frequent fast operation. Look for self-lubricating guides to prolong curtain life.Overhead Coiling Door Safety
Of course, we can’t talk about overhead rolling doors without talking about safety. High performance roll up doors should come with light curtains and photo eyes as standard. A lower photo eye is very well known – it’s the device on most garage doors that halts downward progress of the door when something breaks the single beam at the bottom. It’s very good at making sure people don’t get trapped in the door. But in a fast-paced, high use environment, there are times when a lower photo eye may not be enough. Picture a full load on a forklift, and for some reason the driver stops to chat with a coworker, parking with the forks in the path of the door. A photo eye may not see the forks and would allow the overhead door to close - potentially damaging the load and the forklift, not to mention the potential harm to the forklift operator. That's when a light curtain, which provides up to six feet of continuous protection, is necessary to ensure safety.
Next Bob finds out when to install a high performance overhead door or a standard overhead rolling door.
Click her for part two
Cornell is the industry leading rolling door, security grille and closure product experts since 1828. To inquire how Cornell's long history of innovation and customer service can help you with your next rolling door project, call 1-800-233-8366!
Comments
Post a Comment