Hello!

I would like to share my experience of building bi-folding gates.

Let me tell you in advance – the project was fully implemented – the customer was very pleased and gladly shared a video of his new gate with me)))))

I am a design engineer from Ukraine and I am engaged in the calculation and assembly of various gates for my customers.

I received an order from California to build a bi-fold gate for a 13 foot wide opening. The front side of the gate is made of wood. The gate must be automated and an electric lock installed.

Conventional swing entrance gates were already installed at the customer’s site. The task was to dismantle them. New doors had to be installed on the existing pillars.

Although the design of the gate itself is not complicated, some difficulties arose during its construction.

 

1 – For reliable operation of the gate, reliable supporting posts are required. There were no problems with this. The customer used existing 4″ steel square tube posts.

2 – 2 pairs of identical sashes were made for the left and right sides. A 2″ square pipe was used.

3- I selected the mechanism for folding the sashes based on the wishes of the customer, so that the mechanism would be small in size and not noticeable. The choice of mechanism is also influenced by the width of the opening and the thickness of the sashes.

The BFG Uni mechanism, produced in Ukraine, was best suited for this purpose. Since this type of mechanism is suitable for any thickness of the doors and the standard configuration allows it to be installed in an opening up to 20 feet wide. The mechanism has the smallest dimensions among the BFG range of lever mechanisms. Due to the peculiarity of installing the mechanism at the top end of the gate, it is almost invisible on the doors. There is another compact model BFG Mini. This geared version is also installed from the end of the gate, but its cost is twice as high as the lever BFG Uni, so the cheaper option was chosen.

4 – The time has come to install the folding mechanism of the BFG Uni leaves on the gate installed in the opening.

And this is where installation difficulties began, which occur exclusively with customers from the USA;) Would you assume that these are difficulties with converting from the imperial system of measures to metric? :)))))) Oh, if only this!

I specifically raised this topic in the title because I encounter this problem again and again.

5 – In the USA, in the manufacture of swing gates, axles are used everywhere, which are located in the opening between the post and the leaf! I can assume that this is somehow connected with history – correct me if I’m wrong). I believe that the colonists made wooden posts and screwed in similar axles so that the gate could open in both directions – outward and inward! I can’t find any other explanation why the axles are in the gap between the post and the sash. After all, this arrangement of the axes leads to the fact that this gap is very large and is equal to the diameter of the axle plus fasteners. It’s okay if this gate is transparent to view from the street. But if the gate is completely covered with a board and is opaque, then the problem becomes – how to cover a 2″ wide gap? For this, a cover strip was installed on the outside. In addition, bi-folding gates, purely structurally, open only in one direction and it makes no sense to use such axles Therefore, we use welded axles on the side where the gate will open.

Such axles have smaller dimensions; they are easier to weld to the rear plane of the post and sash, and most importantly, the gap between the post and the sash can be made minimal. I usually do from 0 to 1/4″. With such gaps, the sashes look neat and no one can look into the gap from the street.

But the main problem is that the BFG mechanisms are designed specifically for welded axles on the side of the rear plane of the gate. When you try to use the mechanism on a gate where the axles are installed according to the American scheme, the folding mechanism does not work correctly:(((((

Since this is not the first time I have dealt with this problem and since I developed the BFG mechanisms, I had to make the necessary amendments to the mechanism installation diagram.

The problem is solved by installing shorter brackets for attaching the telescopic rod to the pole.

This can be done either by cutting the bracket to the required length, or by positioning the bracket not vertically, but lying on its side. I need to calculate the length of the bracket and its location on the post based on the diameter of the axis and the gap between the post and the sash.

Now, before shipping orders to the USA, I always ask customers to take a photo of their gate and axles on the pole! 😉

6 – When the problem with shortening the bracket was solved, the doors opened completely at 90 degrees to the opening!

Installing the telescopic drive was no problem. Follow standard installation instructions.

7 – The customer installed an electric lock so that it would lock closed pairs of doors from the inside. Gate drives provide synchronous opening/closing of the leaves with unlocking/locking of the lock.

8 – You can see how it all turned out in the video kindly provided by my customer.

 

Thank you! I will be glad if my topic interests you.