Automatic-Door Gearless Traction Elevator for Residences

How a gearless machine moves the car, and where the machine lives

In a geared traction lift the motor turns through a gearbox, and the gearbox is the part that makes a noise and needs oil. A gearless machine removes it: the motor drives the traction sheave directly, and the sheave carries the ropes. Fewer moving parts, less to wear, and nothing between the motor and the ropes to hum.

That single change rearranges the installation. The motor no longer turns a gearbox, so it is compact enough to sit at the top of the shaft rather than in a plant room beside it. On this model the machine is mounted in the shaft head, so the lift needs no separate room — the arrangement usually described as machine room less.

What the arrangement buys, and what it asks for

Automatic sliding doors in a house: clear width, handing and the landing

An automatic sliding door is quoted on this model as centre opening or side opening. Both are driven open and closed as part of the run, so the passenger never works the door. What changes between them is where the panels park while the lift stands open, which is a question about the wall they are set into. The two things worth settling early are the clear opening width and the space in front of the door that stays clear of furniture.

Centre opening and side opening are the two handings quoted for this model. Neither is better; they suit different walls. The table sets out where each fits.

Neither column changes how the lift works. Both present the same kind of clear opening, driven by the same kind of operator, and the panels are finished to match the interior. What the choice decides is which wall the panels disappear against.

Eleven figures that decide whether this lift fits the house

A specification list is only useful read as a set of conditions. Each figure below has to survive contact with the building: the travel available for the number of floors, the load the car is built for, and the supply the drive asks for.

Those are this model's own quoted figures, converted and nothing more. The figures that govern the unit you receive are the ones on the order confirmation and the rating plate; where two numbers disagree, those two win.

Reading the two that decide the site

Travel and stops. Travel is the distance between the lowest and the highest landing floor, measured floor to floor rather than from the roof. 30 m is quoted for this model, which is roughly eight to ten stops at ordinary storey heights. Add up the individual floor-to-floor heights — that sum, not the building height, is the number to compare.

Shaft and machine. A traction lift needs somewhere for the car, the counterweight and the machine. Here the machine sits at the top of the shaft, so no plant room is needed, but the shaft still has to be wide enough for the car and the counterweight side by side. That is the first dimension to check in a house that already has a shaft.

The parts that decide how the ride feels

A gearless machine on a variable frequency drive accelerates, travels and stops progressively, and holds the car level with each landing. What a passenger notices is the result rather than the hardware: a car that arrives flush and moves off without a jolt. The quoted level of below 60 dB belongs to the same experience.

220 V or 380 V: what the supply has to carry, and what the door operator adds

Power is where a residential traction lift either fits the house or becomes an electrical project. This model is quoted at 220 V or 380 V, 50–60 Hz, so it can be connected from a domestic single phase supply where that is what the house has, and from a three phase supply where one already exists. Either way the lift takes its own dedicated circuit.

The supply is only half the question. A lift with automatic doors draws for two jobs: moving the car through the traction machine, and opening and closing a door at every landing. Both are small loads compared with a workshop machine, and the circuit is sized on what the equipment actually asks for rather than on the motor alone.

The door operator is the part nobody remembers to power

An automatic sliding door is driven on every trip, so it does more work than the traction machine on a lightly used house lift. It is fed from the same circuit as the rest of the lift, and that is why the total load belongs in the electrical conversation from the start rather than after the shaft is built.

Where a house has three phases already, 380 V is simply the supply that is there. Where it has single phase, 220 V is enough and the electrical work stays modest. The position that causes difficulty is a house where the board is already full, or where the incoming supply is loaded close to its limit — worth knowing before a shaft position is fixed.

Gearless traction, hydraulic or screw driven: how to choose between them

Three drive families cover almost every residential lift: traction, hydraulic and screw driven. They lift the same kind of car between the same kind of landings, and what separates them is what they take from the building and what a passenger notices while the car is moving. The comparison below is not an argument for one of them; it is a list of the places where they behave differently, so the choice can be made against the house.

Where this model sits in that table

This model is the traction column, quoted for up to 30 m of travel at 0.6 m/s with loads from 400 to 1000 kg and a noise level below 60 dB. It is the arrangement to compare when a house has the shaft width for a counterweight and the headroom for a machine at the top of the run. It is also the one to choose when quiet travel is worth more than the smallest possible plan area.

Two neighbours on this site are worth reading beside it. Where the priority is the quietest possible ride in a villa or a multi-storey house, the same drive family is described on the noise reduced gearless traction elevator page. Where the shaft is slim and the lift is going into a house that is already built, the slim machine room less backpack lift takes the same gearless principle into a tighter plan. The category page is residential traction elevators, and a geared machine serving offices is described on the geared traction elevator for offices.

Safety equipment, the certification line, and how an installation is accepted

Three devices are named in this model's specification block: an emergency stop, overload protection and a light curtain. Read together they cover three different situations — a person deciding the lift should not move, a car asked to carry more than it is rated for, and someone or something entering the door opening while it is closing.

One certification line appears in the same block: ISO 9001. That is a quality management certification covering how the equipment is made and controlled, and it is the only certification this page claims for this model. It is not a statement about which local standard an installation in your market has to meet.

What each device does

The emergency stop is the deliberate, physical control: a person in or beside the car decides the lift should stop and presses it. It is the device a household asks about first, and the one to demonstrate at handover rather than leave in the manual.

Overload protection watches what the car is being asked to carry. Load options for this model are quoted in four steps up to 1000 kg, and the protection is there so that a car loaded beyond its rated figure does not attempt the journey.

The light curtain guards the door opening while the panels are moving. On a lift with automatic sliding doors it is the device that lets a hand, a foot or a walking frame interrupt the closing sequence, which matters far more in a house than on a lobby lift with attendants.

The walk-through at handover

Seven checks cover what a household will rely on. Each is a physical test rather than a document, and each belongs with the people who will use the lift, and not with the installer alone.

Terms worth agreeing before the lift arrives

Two questions are best answered in writing rather than at handover. The first is what happens at the threshold during a supply interruption: that behaviour belongs to the installation being delivered and should be described for your model rather than assumed from a general rule. The second is the maintenance interval, including the door operator, which is the component with the most to wear on a lift of this kind. Both belong in the same document as the drawing.

Warranty on this model runs 12 months on the equipment supplied. The period, its start point and what is excluded are stated on the order confirmation, which is worth reading as carefully as the specification list.

From enquiry to handover: how an installation runs

A residential lift project fails on information long before it fails on hardware. Each step below carries one question: what has to be true before the next step can start. Read that way, the schedule stops being a promise and becomes a list of things that are either settled or not.

1. Survey: the figures that fix the design

   Count the landings the lift has to serve, and measure floor-to-floor heights between each pair rather than the height of the building. Then the space at each landing: opening width, the wall the door sits in, and the space in front of it that stays clear. Add the headroom above the top landing for the machine, and what the supply at the shaft actually is. A section drawing shortens this step more than anything else.

2. Approval drawing: the document the lift is built to

   The drawing shows the shaft, the car, the counterweight, the machine position at the top of the run, the landing doors and their handing, the control panel position, and the finishes. It is where the dimensions stop being figures on a page and become part of your building. Nothing should be manufactured before it is signed.

3. Manufacture: 45 days from the approved drawing

   Delivery is quoted at 45 days from the agreed drawing, with a supply ability of 10 sets per month. The clock starts on the approval rather than on the enquiry, which is why a late approval costs more time than it looks as though it should.

4. Packing and shipping

   The lift travels in an export non-fumigation wood box, which matters in markets where fumigated packing attracts inspection or delay. Send the destination port or city with the enquiry so shipping and any installation arrangements are quoted in the same reply as the equipment.

5. On site: shaft, machine, ropes, car, doors

   Installation follows the drawing. The shaft is checked for plumb and clear openings, the guide rails and the machine at the top of the run go in, the counterweight is positioned and roped, then the control panel is installed and connected. The car follows, and the landing doors are last — the mechanical item that takes the most adjustment, because every landing is set individually.

6. Commissioning and handover: the walk-through in the section above

   Levelling is set at every landing, the drive is tuned through its acceleration and deceleration, and the door cycle is adjusted at each level. The light curtain and the stop control are then tested in front of the household, and the installation is run through the acceptance list. The documents that come with it — what was supplied, the warranty terms, who to contact — close the project.

Two of those steps deserve protecting in the programme. The survey is where a project is made easy or expensive, and the approval drawing is where a change is still a drawing change rather than a manufacturing change. Everything after that is execution.

Upkeep, the parts that wear, and what the warranty covers

A home lift runs a few times a day, so it needs occasional attention rather than constant care — aimed at the right parts. On a gearless traction lift with automatic doors, four things do nearly all the work. They are the ropes and the sheave that carry the car, the machine and its brake, the door operators on every landing, and the levelling that decides whether the car meets each floor cleanly.

What to check without calling anyone

Three habits are worth building in the first month, because all three catch a change while it is still small. Walk the landings and look at where the car floor meets each one; a step that appears at a single landing means the levelling wants setting again. Listen to the doors at one landing; a change in the sound of the travel usually arrives before a change in behaviour. And keep the space around the control panel clear, because that space is what a service visit needs.

A lift that stops for no obvious reason is usually reporting something: a door that has not completed its cycle, a call that has not registered, a supply interruption. Repeating the fault in the same place every time is useful information; write down where it happened and what the car was doing, and the service visit starts from evidence rather than from a description.

Questions that come up before an order

Questions buyers ask about this model, answered from its own specification block and its own supply terms rather than from the category in general.

What to send for a quotation on this lift

A quotation for a made-to-order lift is only as firm as the information behind it. Send the ten items below and the reply can be a specification with a price band and a delivery date, rather than a range with conditions attached.

The count is for your own file; nothing on this page is submitted anywhere. The commercial terms — minimum order, price band, payment terms, supply ability, delivery time and packing — are maintained in the specification block at the top of the page.

What comes back

The travel is checked against the quoted 30 m and the landing count, and the load against the four steps this model is built in. The plan is checked against the car plus counterweight, and the site supply against the 220 V or 380 V requirement. What returns is a drawing showing the shaft, the car, the counterweight, the machine position, the landing doors and the control panel, with the commercial terms and a delivery date counted from the approved drawing.

Design, shipping, installation and after-sales are arranged per project rather than sold as one package, so the destination matters as much as the dimensions. Send the port or city with the measurements and those arrangements arrive in the same reply.

Printable site survey sheet

The same questions from the sections above, on one sheet, for the person standing in the house with a tape measure. Print it, tick as you go, and the answers become the enquiry rather than notes to be written up later.

If a measurement is one this page cannot answer, write it down as it is. That includes a shaft formed in an unusual wall, a landing shared with a staircase, or a supply that is neither 220 V nor 380 V. A stated gap is easier to design around than a filled-in guess.