Speed and Powerrrr!!
Richard Jackson
Founder and Chairman of Gate Safe a charity promoting the safety of automatic and manual gates and barriers.
These might be the appropriate talking points for Jeremy Clarkson when discussing cars, but they certainly aren’t the right criteria for a sliding gate motor.
Gate Safe is seeing an increasing number of super speedy sliding gate operators being promoted on the internet, some of which are being sold as kits available to the general public, who will not be aware of the dangers of fitting these fast motors to gates.
Let’s take a look at the simple maths associated with these devices. If a gate is moving at 400mm per second (not the fastest operator that we have seen), and it has an 80mm pressure edge fitted to the leading edge of the gate, the gate will need to stop and reverse in less than 200 milliseconds to avoid a significant impact/injury. Clearly that is never going to happen. Even the slower motor which moves at 150mm per second will have to stop and reverse in a little over half a second and that is a big ask, especially if the gate has a bit of wear in the gears and racking.
Non-contact safety - eg photocells, light curtains and laser scanners - are clearly a safer option, but this is often not included in the kits and again the general public would be oblivious to the requirement for such measures.
Gate Safe urges the industry to stop selling automated gate kits to the general public. Ideally such kits should only be available to Gate Safe – and other suitably trained and competent - installers.