Safety is a crucial component in any manufacturing facility, both for the workers and the products moving in and out of the building. That’s why many facilities choose fabric doors, which provide the flexibility and latest safety options that traditional rigid overhead doors can’t offer. With these safety devices, high-performance fabric doors help enhance worker safety while increasing productivity, reducing energy costs and improving traffic flow.
Available safety devices
Modern high-performance fabric doors offer many kinds of safety devices that keep your manufacturing operations flowing day in and day out.
Soft bottom edge. Doors equipped with this feature can easily flex around obstructions. For example, the FlexTec® door features a soft edge that virtually eliminates entrapment concerns, ensuring extra protection for all types of traffic. It’s specially engineered to flex around obstructions and easily release from the door’s side columns.
Reversing bottom edge. When sensors located along the bottom edge of the door detect an obstruction, the door automatically reverses to prevent accidents and injuries.
Safety light systems. These devices are designed to provide increased alerts, warnings and safety in and around the door threshold. They detect if a person or other obstruction is blocking the door’s path and prevent it from closing. Other safety light systems provide visual indicators near the door – such as a flashing amber light or flashing red strips projected onto the floor across the threshold – that warn nearby workers that the door panel is about to move.
Pathwatch® Safety Light Systems. These customizable safety communication technologies are designed to increase door activity awareness and threshold safety. Unlike conventional warning lights, the Pathwatch® systems attract attention from multiple angles or directions of travel — exactly when and where it’s most critical.
The PredaDoor® NXT® features the Pathwatch® Safety Light System as well as dual thru-beam photo eyes to detect movement close to the door. They trigger the door to reverse direction to prevent door-traffic collisions. In addition, a sensitivity-adjustable pneumatic reversing edge reverses the door if anything comes in contact with it.
Breakaway action. Some high-performance fabric doors can take a hit from a forklift or other equipment and break away to reduce damage to the door, equipment and workers. Instead of absorbing the force of the impact, the door panel lifts out of the door tracks and easily moves out of the way without being damaged.
The Fast-Seal® door is one example, equipped with a Break-Away™ bottom bar and featuring the patented System II™ counterbalance and tension system.
Smart detection. The new Rytec SmartSurround™ system combines artificial intelligence, optical light curtains and high-intensity signaling lights to detect and respond to traffic while providing visual cues for vehicles and pedestrians in the immediate area.
System 4® Door Controller. Rytec provides a variety of safety options that can be easily programmed into its System 4® Controller. Its flexibility enables a wide variety of action/response triggers, particularly important when traffic is blocking the light curtain or photo-eye safety devices.
Manual open option. Some high-performance doors can be equipped with a manual pull option so workers can still open them in the event of a power loss.
It’s time to upgrade the safety of your doors
If your manufacturing facility still uses older sectional doors or slow panel doors, it’s time for a safety and efficiency upgrade. Contact us today to discuss your needs.
Learn more about Rytec’s high-performance fabric doors here.
