Classifications

• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B66—HOISTING; LIFTING; HAULING
  • B66B—ELEVATORS; ESCALATORS OR MOVING WALKWAYS
  • B66B13/00—Doors, gates, or other apparatus controlling access to, or exit from, cages or lift well landings
  • B66B13/02—Door or gate operation
• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B66—HOISTING; LIFTING; HAULING
  • B66B—ELEVATORS; ESCALATORS OR MOVING WALKWAYS
  • B66B13/00—Doors, gates, or other apparatus controlling access to, or exit from, cages or lift well landings
  • B66B13/30—Constructional features of doors or gates
  • B66B13/303—Details of door panels
  • B66B13/305—Slat doors for elevators
• • E—FIXED CONSTRUCTIONS
  • E06—DOORS, WINDOWS, SHUTTERS, OR ROLLER BLINDS IN GENERAL; LADDERS
  • E06B—FIXED OR MOVABLE CLOSURES FOR OPENINGS IN BUILDINGS, VEHICLES, FENCES OR LIKE ENCLOSURES IN GENERAL, e.g. DOORS, WINDOWS, BLINDS, GATES
  • E06B9/00—Screening or protective devices for wall or similar openings, with or without operating or securing mechanisms; Closures of similar construction
  • E06B9/02—Shutters, movable grilles, or other safety closing devices, e.g. against burglary
  • E06B9/08—Roll-type closures
  • E06B9/11—Roller shutters
  • E06B9/13—Roller shutters with closing members of one piece, e.g. of corrugated sheet metal

Definitions

• the present invention concerns an operating device comprising an elevator door folding around a vertical axis, as from the preamble of claim 1.
• Elevator doors folding around a vertical axis are known from US-A- 6,082,499 and FR-A-2800055.
• the present invention refers in particular to an operating device for operating the elevator door.
• the solution shown in FR-A-2800055 does not foresee a motor assembled on the vertical axis around which the door is folded, since in this case the door is not operated directly from the vertical axis, but it is dragged in its upper and lower parts, in level with the upper and lower guides, thanks to a complex system of small cords that drag the two doors. Apart the complexity due to the door dragging cords, this solution as well requests space for the motor and the gearing-down mechanism, which involves a waste of building space.
• the present invention aims to eliminate the disadvantages still present in today' s operating systems of elevator doors folding around a vertical axis and mainly to eliminate the requirement of space caused by the presence of a motor for operating the door.
• the invention intends taking advantage of the most recent knowledge acquired in the field of conveyors being operated from inside.
• Another purpose of the present invention is to provide a door for elevators that regroups all the wanted requirements for an innovative and efficient door:
• the above-mentioned aims can be achieved by means of an elevator door folding around a vertical axis in conformity with the characteristics of the dependent claims.
• They contain the fundamental measures to realize a fire-resistant door, which is either airtight to fire or resisting to fire for the minimal time defined by the laws and regulations in force (that can vary and indeed vary from Country to Country).
• Such measures are the rigidity around any immaginary horizontal axis and the folding around any vertical axis in order to be able to realise the rolling up of the door around a vertical axis, with a minimal bending radius (r), that is smaller than the tenth part of the thickness (d) of the door.
• FIG. 1 a first form of an elevator cabin with a cabin door and an elevator landing entrance door rolling up around the corresponding axes
• FIG. 2 a second form of an elevator cabin with a cabin door rolling up around an axis and an elevator landing entrance door, which can be deviated of 90° to one of its sides,
• FIG. 3 a more simplified view of ah inventive door type, seen in perspective and partially in section,
• FIGS 1 and 2 show two forms of elevator cabins to which the present invention can be suitably applied.
• Two forms of elevator cabins according to the invention are represented in Figures 1 and 2, where in both cases it is a matter of simplified perspective embodiments in which are foreseen, as prescribed today from the laws and regulations, two doors, and that is to say one door directly on the cabin 1 and one door in order to close the landing entrance of the elevator shaft.
• the door 2 of cabin 1 is the internal one, while the door 3 of the landing entrance turns out to be on the outside. Both such doors 2 and 3 can preferably have the characteristics foreseen by the present invention, even if in principle this same one refers to the construction of an elevator door, being the one of the cabin or the one of the landing entrance.
• both doors, 2 and 3, as shown in Figure 1 and 2 are of the type proposed in the present invention, that is to say that they are doors folding around a vertical axis, since therefore only in such a way it is possible to eliminate, in an optimal way, the loss of space laterally to the cabin for each elevator halt station.
• the present invention deals with the construction of a folding door for elevators, so we will focus on describing the characteristics of a similar door without entering into the technical details of the general construction of the elevator and/or of its cabin, details that do not play any role in the present invention and that are already known to the man skilled in the art.
• the door 2 and 3 must be "fireproofing", that is to say that they must have the necessary characteristics of airtight closing, that is to say that, in practice, they must be made of an unique continuous surface without holes, passages, fissures, etc. and to be made of a fire-resistant material (metal or fire- resistant plastic etc.), so as to satisfy to the relative norms present in every Country.
• fireproofing that is to say that they must have the necessary characteristics of airtight closing, that is to say that, in practice, they must be made of an unique continuous surface without holes, passages, fissures, etc. and to be made of a fire-resistant material (metal or fire- resistant plastic etc.), so as to satisfy to the relative norms present in every Country.
• the present invention focus also on the mechanical properties that a similar door must possess for being used as elevator door and as a result realise the above-mentioned advantages as a similar door offers in the elevators field.
• the door 2, 3 is sufficiently rigid around any horizontal axis so as to satisfy to the legal provisions - which have already been mentioned - on the maximal deformability for permissible bending if stressed in its centre, in the closed state, with the horizontal force required from the norm.
• the door must therefore be rigid in relation to its vertical plan in order not to exceed a permissible maximal "bowing" .
• This legal provision is made in order to avoid that, in case of excessive filling of the cabin or if a person leans itself heavily against the inner door, this door can excessively bend outwards and jeopardise the elevator functionality.
• the door 2, 3 must be sufficiently folding around every vertical axis in order to be able to be folded with a bending radius r (see Figure 2) ten times lower than the thickness of the door 2, 3, indicated with d in Figures from 3a to 3f.
• r we indicate the overall thickness of the door 2, 3, that is to say the maximal thickness measured over eventual ribs or reinforcement elements. This second provision gives therefore a precise indication about the radius of the rolling axis 4, 5, 6 and of the deviation of the door - for what concerns the landing entrance door of Figure 2 -.
• the characteristics of the inventive elevator door are therefore the maximal folding around every vertical axis and the maximal resistance to bending in respect to every horizontal axis, where then this last characteristic is tied to legal provisions while the first one constitutes a free choice of the inventor and is tied to the constructive conditions that must be guaranteed in order of being able to benefit from the advantage foreseen by the invention.
• the continuous surface of door 2, 3 is made of an unique sheet of fire-resistant material, reinforced in at least one of the sides (in Figures 3b and 3c for example reinforced only on the upper side of the Figure) by means of vertical bars arranged at a mutual distance the ones from the others and solidly fixed to the sheet 39 along all their length. It must be specified that when we here speak about “vertical bars” we mean that these bars 3 10 are to be found in this position when the corresponding door 2, 3 is placed in the elevator in a working position.
• the sheet of fire-resistant material (simple or compound, made for example as sandwich of multiple material layers) has in itself already a sufficient bending resistance in the sense that it does not have (as shown for example in Figure 3a) to be equipped with any reinforcement by means of vertical bars or other reinforcement elements, if it also maintains the necessary folding qualities in order to satisfy the conditions requested by the claims.
• the bars 310 have a cylindrical section shape. This shape is ideal, since it allows the door folding in the winding or deviation point, in practice over all the surface dimension (that would not be the case if the bars 310 had, as an example, a rectangular section and were solidly fixed to the sheet of fire-resistant material along one of their sides).
• FIG. 3f and 3e Another alternative embodiment is represented in Figures 3f and 3e, based on which the continuous surface is made of an unique sheet 39', respectively 39", exhibiting, at regular mutual distances, vertical ribs 3 1 1 obtained by means of sheet pressing in a die (case of ribs 31 1 of Figures 31) or by means of local deformation of sheet 39" (case of ribs 3 1 1 of Figure 3e).
• the fireproofing continuous surface that is to say the sheet of fire-resistant material
• This particular embodiment is particularly suitable in order to realise the solutions shown in Figures 3c and 3e.
• the advantages related to the use of a foil of metallic sheet and in particular of stainless steel, are more than obvious (fire-resistance, high elasticity coefficient, etc). Such solutions require in any event the employment of appropriate vertical reinforcements as previously described.
• the fireproofing continuous surface is made of a sheet of fire-resistant plastic material 39, with a thickness comprised between 2 and 10 millimetres, preferably 3 millimetres.
• the problem of such a sheet of fire-resistant plastic material is the one of the bending resistance that, as wanted by the present invention, must be high around the horizontal axes when the door is assembled into the elevator.
• Another embodiment form which has the advantage of allowing obtaining the maximal reduction of the overall dimension laterally to the elevator cabin, foresees that the bending radius r is comprised between 3 and 20 centimetres.
• the folding elevator door can favourably be made as rolling up door or winding door around a vertical axis 4, 5, 6 ( Figures 1 and 2) placed on the door opening side or also that the door is folded of 90° from its opening side, as shown with the landing entrance door 3 of Figure 2 and is guided into upper and lower guides 7, 8, which are straight after such bending.
• the handling of the external door will preferably take place via dragging by means of the corresponding cabin door, while in the event of rolling up door, the handling of the door will preferably take place individually, motorising the corresponding rolling axis 4, 5 or 6.
• These motorisation problems are well known by the man skilled in the art and are today solved mainly by means of chain drive or toothed gearing.
• Another preferred embodiment foresees that the fireproofing continuous surface, respectively the sheet of fire-resistant material, is textured on its external side so as to improve the aesthetical appearance.
• the elevator shaft landing entrance door 3 cannot be provided with a proper operating device, but must be opened through a dragging action by the cabin door 2. In this way it is efficaciously prevented that the landing entrance door 3 opens without the elevator cabin 1 being present, which would involve big dangers for the user, who often enters in a hurry into the elevator without assessing if the cabin is there or not. So for example in the case of Figure 5, the rolling axis 5 of door 3 could never be operated through an operating device.
• the elevators doors being the one 2 of cabin 1 as well as the one 3 of the landing entrance, must always remain closed and open only for a precise opening order, where then the operating device of door 2 of cabin 1 must be able to overcome the exercised forces, by means of springs or counterweights or others, on door 2 as well as on door 3, tending to close the door.
• the present invention concerns in fact the way of operating an elevator door folding around a vertical axis, i.e., as explained here above, the way of operating the door 2 of the elevator cabin 1 , taking into account that the landing entrance door 3 is only and always dragged in order to be opened and that this is done mechanically from the door 2, while for all the remaining time the door must remain closed and be guarded against the danger of an unintentionally opening.
• the upper and lower horizontal guides in which the doors 2, 3 are guided are then indicated with the reference numbers 7 and 8. Therefore the invention concerns specifically the operating of door 2 of cabin I, said door 2 being of a type folding around a vertical axis 4 or 6, with folding meaning that it can be bent around such axis of a certain angle or even, according to a preferred invention form, be rolled up around such axis (solution of Figure 1 and 2 for what concerns door 2 of the cabin 1 ) and is characterised by three fundamental conditions : a) the vertical axis 4, 6 constitutes also the dragging device or respectively the operating device of the door 2 of elevator cabin 1 during its opening.
• the axis 4, 6 is a axis properly operated and driven in order to satisfy all safety opening and closing requirements that prevail according to the current safety criteria (arrest in case of an obstruction, return with short pushes etc), b) the door 2 of cabin 1 is constantly subject to a tractive force, which tends to close the door, this being a condition that this today commonly requested and that can be solved in different ways, as we will explain below, c) the vertical axis 4, 6 is made as a motor with external rotor and internal stator. This is the true innovative characteristic of the invention.
• Similar rolls operated with internal stator are commercialised in many embodiment forms, such as for example frequency-driven direct-current motors equipped with controlling electronic systems that allow their rotation within huge fields of number of rotations, from zero to the maximum, with sufficient torques, such as brush or brushless motors or such as motors equipped with gearing-down mechanism, between the rotor and a surrounding shell to the rotor, in order to mechanically reduce the number of rotations of the rotor of the motor to a much lower number of rotations of the rolls shell.
• the motor with external rotor and internal stator extends on all the length of axis 4, 6, but it is sufficient that it extends only on a part of such length.
• the torque exercised on the axis motor 4, 6 that must be sufficient in order to move the door 2 of the cabin 1 with safety, overcoming the force that tends to close the door when the axis is not operated (force that, by the way, is of an amount from 10 to 20 Kg, therefore easily to overcome also utilising an electric motor of small diameter, but of sufficient length).
• the external diameter of a vertical axis 4, 6, in which is placed the motor is comprised between 4 and 10 cm and is preferably equal to approximately 5 cm, where then such dimension is suitable in the circumstance where the axis 4, 6 constitutes itself the motor external rotor as well as in the circumstance where between the motor external rotor and the axis a shell is present that contains all the motor.
• the above-mentioned feature is the one that allows obtaining the better exploitation of the space and is suitable in the circumstance where the door 2 rolls up on the axis 4, 6, as shown in Figures 1 and 2, as well as in the circumstance that foresees that the door 2 is merely deviated around the vertical axis of 90° and then pushed into the upper and inferior guides (solution not shown in the Figures for the door 2, but analogous to what shown for the door 3 in Figure 2).
• the Figure 3 shows a door 2 for an elevator cabin in which we can see the door partially opened and therefore partially rolled up around a vertical axis 4.
• the door has been "sectioned" in the central area, partly in order to allow seeing the axis 4 forming the operating element of door 2, according to the present invention.
• 4 it is meant the motor's external rotor as well as a shell connected with the motor's external rotor by means of a movement transmission, such as for example a gearing-down mechanism (not shown), which is however known from the above- mentioned practice of the operated rolls.
• a gearing-down mechanism not shown
• the tractive force to which the door 2 is constantly subject to and that tends to close the door, is applied at least in its upper and lower part.
• This solution tends to eliminate the danger of embedment of the door, danger that could be quite important if the door 2 were subject to traction only in an asymmetric point, for example only in its upper or lower part.
• the door vertical edge would tend to set itself in an inclined position in relation to the vertical, since it is withheld more from one side than from the other, what would involve the blocking by j amming also with limited forces.
• the Figures 4 and 5 show a device to apply the tractive force to an extremity (the upper one in the detail shown) of the door 2.
• a traction mean 9 such as, for example, a flexible band that pulls the door 2 towards right, in Figure 4, trying to close it against the hitting 3.
• the upper side of the door 2 is only represented in Figures 4 and 5, but the same traction mean mechanism is foreseen also on the lower side of the door; therefore the door turns out to be pulled by traction from two traction means (of which only the upper one is shown), in a symmetrical way.
• the traction means 9 is deviated on a first pulley 1 1 (of which in Figure 5 only the turning axis can be seen) and passes then on a second pulley 12 in order to get back to the door hitting 10 to which it is fixed.
• a tractive force produced, for example, from a tractive spring 13 fixed on the other door jamb 14, acts then on the pulley 1 1.
• Whatever type of energy accumulator can naturally be employed instead of the spring 13.
• the advantages of the present invention lay in the fact that it allows obtaining the maximum saving of overall dimension, since the space to be allocated to the driving motor of the vertical axis, around which folds or rolls up the folding elevator door, lacks here completely.
• the elevator door can be supplied as compact pre-assembled unit already equipped with the driving unit (motor) and maybe also with control system unit (electronic) incorporated into the building of the door itself.
• the described invention for a door with a single shutter can analogously be realised for doors with two shutters, incorporating the necessary modifications, also in the context of wide doors with three and more shutters. What is important is the necessity that the motorized doors are of a type folding around a vertical axis that constitutes its control system.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Structural Engineering (AREA)
• Architecture (AREA)
• Civil Engineering (AREA)
• Elevator Door Apparatuses (AREA)
• Power-Operated Mechanisms For Wings (AREA)

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• 2005
  • 2005-01-21 EP EP05700324A patent/EP1706347A2/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 2005-01-21 WO PCT/CH2005/000029 patent/WO2005070807A2/en active Application Filing

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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