Home Forums General Discussion Technical Questions ‘79 Otis HOCL fire service issue

Hello all!

I’m in Alaska working on an old Otis that has had a pana 40 upgrade in the past. The problem now is that the light curtain is active in phase 1 fire service (car doesn’t have phase 2). I can easily use a pair of unused contacts on the HEO relay to disable the light ray on fire service but the doors will close at high speed with too much kinetic energy. This car doesn’t have nudging either. I’m haveing a problem figuring out how it originally worked, I’m guessing the safe edge remained active at all times? Am I going to have to use some contacts in the HEO relay to keep the door out of high speed?
I do have prints for this elevator. And help is greatly appreciated.

Joe

Originally it probably had a safety edge and there was no reason to slow the doors down to nudging speed. Now that there is an electronic edge on the door, the doors need to be closed at reduce speed during phase 1. I do not know what operator you have. I can help you but will need pictures of the print.

Thanks!
I can email you a PDF of the drawings if you wanna message me an address or phone number.

Had this happen to me. An over zealous salesman looking to make his numbers, sells the customer an edge without having a clue about closing in nudging. Ended up giving them an operator upgrade.

This happens a lot. You would be surprised how many repair crews will just slap on an edge detector and go. Sometimes the inspector catches it, sometimes it goes for years before someone notices that cares. The easiest way to do it is with an Adams Gatekeeper. It will time out, buzz, bypass itself and give you a relay contact to keep the doors from getting to high speed. On a car with an old GAL operator, I use that contact to pick a KUP relay to shunt the slowdown, then you just make phase 1 pick that relay too. I haven’t done this on an old Otis operator though, what kind is it?

I believe it’s an Otis 7300 operator.

Same scenario here. The light curtain was added years ago and the inspector just found it and wrote it up. Turns out that we have already sold them an operator upgrade, so that should correct the fire service issue.

Same customer, different elevator (US 1230 hydro) was written up because of insufficient bottom runby. It’s been that way for decades with no way to get the proper runby without bottoming out the jack before the buffer is compressed....

That’s ridiculous! I don’t think they can write something up that was accepted on initial inspection. A couple years ago an inspector wrote up 18” working clearance encroached by the feed line running into the slab. This was also a 1230, installed and accepted before I was born.

One issue here is they didn’t have elevator inspections way back. But they also come back on stuff they did the acceptance inspections on. “Oops, guess we missed it then, have to make it ‘right’ now”

It’s job security for me

If you just need a small amount more bottom runby, Take the safety channels (normally 5" or 6") and replace them with two 4" channels sandwiching the stile gussets between them. four of the 4" will be stronger than two of the 5" or 6" channels. Gains 1" to 2" of runby at the bottom. It however will cost you some of the top runby. Works where the Jack head wasn't put in at the right height.