Lift Report

Producing and delivering about 4000 glass elevator doors per year, the Munichbased Meiller Aufzugtüren GmbH is one of the largest and most experienced vendors of glass doors and portals on the German market. And the company’s sales territory is expanding into other western and eastern European countries and even as far away as Turkey.

Meiller spares no effort when developing innovations for glass doors. Whenever new options for using glass appear on the market, they usually come from Meiller. Handsome designs, some with sophisticated illumination effects and extreme load resistance are the result of great creativity and extensive testing. At the “BAU 2007” construction trade fair the OPTI LIGHT® system – incorporating attractive, automatic glass elevator doors – was honored with an innovation award for architecture and construction. Extremely rugged, and nonetheless elegant, Meiller doors have demonstrated their brawny qualities in numerous railroad stations all across Europe. It is with good reason that the company is considered to be the specialist for glass in the elevator door industry.

The doors are among the elevator components exposed to the most extreme loading. This is especially true for glass doors. Thanks to their transparency, they are particularly light in appearance but they are in fact significantly heavier. De- pending on the exact design, they may be from two to four times the weight of sheet metal doors. This results in more stringent demands on other door components, particularly the header, the rollers, the drives and the transfer cams. Vandalism- resistant hoistway doors have to be particularly robust if they are to satisfy the stringent requirements set forth by the Federal Railways Regulation Authority. Meiller is also making more frequent deliveries of fire-safe glass doors complying with the requirements set forth in DIN EN 81-58 E 120.

Whenever it manufactures high-quality glass doors, Meiller imposes special quality expectations on the door panels.

Quick and easy installation is possible in only the rarest of cases whenever the use of pins between the door panel and the suspension is prescribed. Infinite adjustment of door panel height and depth has already been incorporated into many versions but this is by no means a matter of course. Lower-edge guides across the entire width of the door panel reduce the amount of lateral play and, depending on the engineering concept, also make it possible to significantly increase safety in regard to falls and to integrate retention systems such as those prescribed for categories 1 and 2 in EN 81-71.

In the interest of reducing maintenance costs, it should be possible to replace the lower guide quickly and easily, without having to remove the door panel. Special self-lubricating materials or high-performance industrial felts can be used to reduce door running noises.

To reduce the risk of injury when using glass door panels, close attention should be paid to a smooth and flush join between the sheet metal edge profile and the glass surface. This is usually taken into account for glass door panels incorporating a metal frame but where glass door panels are secured only at the top and bottom edges, this is often neglected for technical and cost reasons. To achieve a transition which is sufficiently smooth, the pre-stressed, bonded panes of tempered glass will have to be milled or ground – on the surface toward the user – to create an offset corresponding to the thickness of the edge protector.

This technology involves high reject rates. The work cannot be carried out retroactively on door panels that have already been installed. That is why edge protectors are usually just clipped in place on the edge.

The situation is similar for all-glass door panels made up of several panes of tempered safety glass. In order to achieve a smooth transition between the edge profile and the individual panes of glass, the stack of panes will have to be ground and polished after lamination.

The appropriate agreements should be made in advance with the manufacturer since this version, though optically very appealing, involves additional costs but is not required by any standard or guideline. To reduce the inter-panel gap, especially in telescoping doors with all-glass panels, inexpensive plastic rods are often given preference over glass rods. Having the manufacturer’s confirmation of UV stability and long-term resistance to cleaning agents can, should there ever be reasons for complaint, save both costs and a great deal of annoyance.

The panels for an elevator door are the only moving components with which the user normally comes into direct contact. To ensure that the prescribed structural strength and safety against falls are achieved, it will be necessary to adhere to a number of standards. Exactly which regulations are applicable will depend on the design – sheet metal, glass with frame or all-glass door. Another essential component in safety testing is pendulum shock testing, which will quickly reveal the weak points in any door.

Here the company’s own specifications even exceed those in the EN regulation. The test is thus carried out even on larger units for which the standard makes an exception due to the glass structure.

The design and execution options for modern glass door systems are extremely broad. Glass door panels, either surrounded by a frame or frameless with point-type holders and milled recesses for edge protection profiles, are produced using various types of glass. Numerous effects can be achieved – through etching or sandblasting, with films or screen printing.

PRIVALITE® is a laminated safety glass with integrated liquid crystals that can render transparent glass milky, and vice versa, in a fraction of a second.

New to the range are glass doors with a one-way mirror effect. Whenever the area behind the pane is dark, the pane will reflect like a mirror. The pane will become transparent if the back- ground is bright. This means that it is no longer necessary to refurbish the hoistway, at considerable expense, when modernizing elevators. Painting the walls black will suffice. If there is no car behind the landing doors, then the glass will be reflective and the view into the hoistway will be blocked. The pane will become transparent as soon as the illuminated cab passes by or comes to a stop at the landing. The door installed in the car works the same way and will be transparent only near the landing doors, due to the light entering from the landing.

The prize-winning OPTILIGHT® product, a transparent arrangement of panes combined with light sources and intended for use as elements in doors, windows or walls, offers fascinating options for using light in individual designs in conjunction with glass or transparent plastics. OPTILIGHT ® is a technically sophisticated system comprising light sources and textured light deflection zones. This system is integrated into the bonded glass used for elevator doors. Due in part to illumination with a laser and possibly also due to modifying the texture of the material used for the panes (with etching or engraving , for instance) the light will be refracted , deflected or reflected. This gives architects and designers countless options for creative design of hoistway and car doors. Logos, pictograms, decorative geometric elements, numbers and letters or capacitive elements in the door serve to orient elevator passengers or to give signals.

The trip with the glass lift begins with the passenger passing through the glass portal. The company offers a wealth of highly esthetic solutions for the elevator entrances – airy and elegant combinations composed of glass and other highquality materials that have been treated in any of a number of ways. These glass doors are driven by time-tested and safe door drives and take full account of the expectations of architects, elevator engineers, owners and operators.

“Integral planning” – an approach being practiced ever more frequently and placing ever greater demands on building technology – gets architects and planners more closely involved in the selection and evaluation of elevator systems and their components. In order to familiarize this target group with all the application options for glass elevator doors – as design or functional elements or even as problem-solvers – Meiller, in its function as a glass door specialist, is increasingly presenting information in architecture- related media and at trade fairs.

The sales staff can provide expert res responses to any and all questions on glass elevator doors. The parameterized elevator doors catalog has been available for some time now. It is the perfect software for planning glass doors in standard configurations.

The share of glass doors used in elevators continues to rise – reflecting the general trend toward the use of glass in contemporary architecture. The Meiller organization supports this trend with consistent development of innovative solutions in which esthetics and function harmonize perfectly one with another.