Home Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Armour Dynaglide

I have these two Armour Dynaglides,maybe a prototype.

No car top selector,it gets a slowdown 24 in from the floor and does a binary countdown to the floor.

The issue I'm having with one of them is basically when it stops,the brake should drop and hold first before the contactor drops.
This is not happening,instead everything drops at the same time causing a very hard stop.
There are adjustments for the decel,curve and final speed.
I have tweeked these till I basically have no curve and a very slow final speed and it still does it.

Any ideas?

Does the contactor have a delay off coil? Maybe a short in the cap invovled in that circuit?

It has a timer circuit,solid state.I was looking at that,but it seems it would be a time delayed on.
But,I could be wrong.
Took some pictures for our armour expert and sent them to him because what I had and the book he had didn't quite match up.

There is also an"offset" setting which you can cause to start slowing down sooner,with no effect.So,I think my countdown is ok,but I'm going to further investigate the inductor that initiates the countdown to make sure it's starting at the vane and not somehow delayed.

hold in the contactor by hand until the brake sets, this will prove it is the loop contactor falling out to soon. as you indicated, the brake must set, then the loop contactor falls out, if not there is no loop current, and the car will drift or not stop softly now that is a dinosaur. havent worked on one of those for 20 years, surprised any are still running.

I will try that,thanks.
It seems that Armour was the testing grounds for they're elevators here.

So,what would cause the contactor to fall out to soon?
The digital count?
What holds in the contactor after the brake is set for that few seconds.

That is what is happening is the car drifts a bit the further up the hoistway you get,it gets worst,of course.
Maybe the field voltage,but it does it in the down direction also.

Sorry, random thoughts and thinking.

found an old print for the dynaglide. looks like MP picks up the M relay, which is delayed on the drop by the resistor, capacitor network RM,RC. check the timing between MP and M if M drops as soon as MP drops, then the rc network is open.
I do have an old manual if you need one, this is a fairly complicated system, I remember being a rookie more then 20 years ago, and there was only one guy who knew how to work on this, and he was from Armor, he was the one who taught me, and i was the lucky one who had to go to the job when it could not be fixed. It was very intimidating to work on. I seem to remember something about a landing computer that would take over the final approach to the floor and try to modify the pattern to get a consistent stop. I believe it was problematic, and i think the guy from armor disconnected the landing computer on the jobs we had. I am trying to go by memory here but i believe when the car decelerates, the pattern will decrease until the count matches the floor count, at which time the pattern will be 0, and the car will stop. i think the landing computer modified the pattern depending on how fast or slow the count was changing as the car approached the floor count. without going over the manual again, i think thats the basic idea. if you need a manual pm me with your email, i could send you something.

Thanks,Scott for the response.

You are correct in the landing computer and all.
My expert and I were trying to figure out how to disconnect it also.
We were looking for a terminal on the back of the drive to jump out ,but it didn't quite match up.
He told me the same thing,that it was overkill and they went around disconnecting it.
But for him,that was 20+ years ago.Fuzzy memory also.
I have three adjusting books on it and have studied them hard.

Haven't been back to the job yet,nor have I heard from our expert.

Now that I think about it,they,mp and m,did drop out about the same time.
But so did the other car.I think.
When I get back,I will check into that.

What I need is time to troubleshoot,but nowadays,there is none.
Until the customer is raising hell,which hasn't happened yet.

We have removed the entire Dynaglide Drive and installed a Magnatek DSD 412. Some modifications but works well. I might have some print markups if you might want to upgrade. Let me know. Thx.

I have a fair amount of Dynaglide tech info. Drop me a line at [email protected] I'll send you what I have.

Work Safe All

That would have been great a few months ago.
But I have since been laid off,so no longer my problem.
Looking into getting into robotics at the moment since there is nothing going on in the future as of now.27 years of being in elevator business with 7 years to go til retirement down the hole.I have a ton of Otis books and more parts then you can shake a stick at.
The savings are starting to get to the point were I will have to find a job.
Elevator guy with an attitude fighting against the corporation lost the battle.