Motors from the last century
The garage door business has seen a variety of automatic garage door openers over the last 20 years – with some of the early workhorse motors still dutifully doing their job on a daily basis. The three main components of these units, namely the motor, the remote transmitters and the drive chain, changed little until just a few years ago when the first innovations started to appear.
The drive chain – the rail running from the motor to the top of the door – which pulls and pushes the garage door, consisted for a long time of a pole supporting a chain running on either side and a shuttle connecting to the door with a short steel arm. Some manufacturers replaced the pole with a steel T-bar shaped rod which gave more strength and was a lot heavier. This offered less flexibility where the length needed to be changed but was less susceptible to bending if resistance was encountered from a motor that had to work hard on a difficult door.
In the last few years the industry has moved to a new design which consists of a “C- shaped” steel or aluminium rail surrounding the chain and shuttle. This has proved to be a far more durable, strong and flexible design. With the previous format, as the chain stretched over time, it would sag down and ride against the top of the door; a noisy and messy situation. With the new innovation, the chain is no longer exposed which improves safety and eliminates the risk of wayward items stored in the garage roof from becoming entangled in the chain; not a common occurrence but a risk nevertheless. For installers, the new design is less messy and quick to fit helping to reduce the cost to the consumer. The profile is also thinner allowing fitment where there is limited space.
The design also lends itself to rubber belts being used in place of chains. This offers a slightly quieter option where the garage is close to living quarters. The belt drive has steel reinforcing strands running through it hand has proved to be very durable. They can be shortened but not lengthened so it is important to specify the height of the door when ordering to ensure the correct length of rail is supplied. TechForce can supply both types of rail subject to availability.
The motors have undergone the most significant changes over the last few years.
The early motors had belts turning a shaft with a sprocket driving the chain. More and more of these belts are failing now but owners wanting to eke out a bit more life from their motors are able to replace some of them. Invariably this signals an unavoidable replacement motor with all the advantages of the latest designs and warranty. The next generation replaced the belts with nylon sprockets. The typical problems we encounter are bearings wearing out and the sprocket snapping off the shaft. All these motors were noisy and the increasing noise points to an impending failure of the motor. Another indicator of approaching breakdown is the need to adjust the opening and closing limits of the door. These early designs largely relied on mechanical adjustment of the opening and closing limits as well as the sensitivity settings; often a time-consuming exercise to get right and prone to problems where the sensitivity was not correct. One model did this all automatically with the requirement for mechanical stoppers at each end of the drive shaft for the motor to sense the appropriate limits. The early design is still available having stood the test of time but is rapidly being replaced by the current crop of innovative units.
The latest generation of motors takes advantage of the advanced electronic innovations we have enjoyed in recent times. The motors are smaller, lighter and extremely quiet. All settings are electronic, very precise and mostly quick and easy to code. This all leads to the industry being able to keep down prices to the consumer since the freight, transport, storage, handling and installation costs are all lower. Despite the vast improvement in design, prices have barely moved. Apart from their almost silent operation, they offer soft opening and closing features which further eliminates noise the early motors were plagued by. Even old doors benefit from these advances. Some models have extra features such as the ability to operate the built-in light from the remote and lock the unit from being operated. In practice few users take advantage of these attributes and sometimes find them a hindrance.
Remote transmitters have seen a similar paradigm shift over the last few decades. Being the “portable” component of the system, they also suffer the most abuse from being lost, broken, dropped, trampled, getting wet, having leaking batteries or components just wearing out from constant use.
The early remotes had a set of dip switches which had a matching set of switches on the motor. They were bulky units and quite fragile. The market did however respond for the need for smaller and more robust replacements and these are available for even the oldest models.
The next generation saw the demise of dip switches, smaller devices and relatively simple matching of the remote to the motor. Advances in technology also brought about more secure transmitters with hopping frequencies and codes to deter bandits. There was little regulation of the frequency bands they all used so interference with the ever increasing range of electronic devices occurred on occasion.
Most manufacturers have now standardised on the 433.92Mhz frequency band for their remotes. They encode their devices with rolling codes containing billions of combinations. There are shapes and sizes to suite all users’ requirements such as key-ring remotes with sliding covers to prevent accidental activation, in-car sunvisor remotes, fixed wireless wall switches and also receivers that can be connected to other devices that work from the same remote.
Why the history lesson?
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