Oh, escalator, ok.
Maybe they should have named it Mis-Step?
Kone's chinese escalators have step chains that are the thinest I've ever seen. They really took the heft of the materials out of the design, pared it down to the bare minimum. Feels like a toy.
Also, the control spits out faults left and right.
After only 4 years, the newel ball bearing rollers are already seizing up, (RS type, double sealed) squeaking, and needing to be replaced. The bearings grenade, dropping shards of broken seal rings, and sharp ass ball carriers down into the sheath of the handrail. Oh, great! Love those cheap ass chinese bearings. They're like little bobby traps, ready to spill their destruction onto the world at large.
The mortise cylinders used for key starting have no mechanical stop, so the force is taken up by the tiny little Microswitches, which invariably crack.
They tried to get fancy with their wiring, and on the spring-clip type controller terminals, they put a ferrule on the end of the wires. I guess they didn't want the wires to fray. But it was so ill-conceived, it doesn't even work, because the ferrule is too big to fit under the spring clip, so the wires are barely attached. The spring clip just sorta leans on the ferrule at an angle, but the clips' teeth are no where near the ferrule, (being spread so wide by the oversized ferrule), so there is no positive "bite" by the clip into the ferrule. Vibration causes them to back out. Got more than one wire landed on a terminal? HAH HA, fuhgeddabowdit! Incredibly childish engineering. Possibly designed by Ray Charles, or Stevie Wonder.
On the plus side, their combplate impact switches, (vertical and horizontal) are easy to maintain and adjust. I guess they haven't gotten around to re-designing that part yet.
To be fair, there are other parts that aren't completely awful.
Last edited by Vic; 12/22/11 02:00 AM.
