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Although a garage door lock kit may appear to be a small component, they can be exposed to incredible mechanical stress in a heavy duty or industrial application. A garage door lock kit may be subjected to all of the below each day: forcible entry, vibrations from garage doors opening and closing, thermal expansion and contraction of the surrounding frame and door, impacts from forklifts or cars, etc. If your lock kit is unable to stand up to mechanical stress it may fail, leading to compromised security, safety and operational effectiveness. Below is a description of four engineering elements used in high load specification lock kits.
High-Strength Material Selection: Die-Cast Alloys and Stainless Steel
A high-load garage door lock kit starts with the materials of which it is made. Most low specification garage door lock kits are made of weak cast zinc or even plastic that easily fracture under torque or stress. High-load garage door lock kits are made of high quality; zinc/aluminum die-cast materials for custom swing handle designs, or stainless steel (304/316) for load bearing components such as latch bolts and mounting plates.
WenZhou MeiGu Lock Industry Co. Ltd., have become experts in the materials listed above, and are able to mold their Zinc/Aluminum die castings into any shape swing handle imaginable while still ensuring there is enough structural integrity and rigidity. Stainless steel is ideal in extreme conditions and environments as it is highly tolerant of stress corrosion cracking and will maintain tensile strength even in very high temperatures. A lock kit specified with this level of material is able to tolerate greater than 5000 N of prying force without deforming permanently. Material choice in lock hardware is essential in avoiding premature wear and breakage of load bearing components.
Robust Rod and Swinghandle Transmission Mechanisms
Most lower specification locks utilize a poorly designed transmission system to translate the torque from a key or handle into a locking force; cheaply made rod linkages often bend, the cams often crack, or the retaining pins may shear under stress. A well designed and engineered garage door lock kit would utilize robust, high-spec, rod transmission with oversized gears and hardened steel shafts.
MeiGu's robust swing handle and rod systems were originally designed for industrial cabinets but have been successfully adapted for heavy duty garage door lock hardware. This means a high specification, well designed, swing handle can translate turning force into 10mm-12mm diameter locking rods that engage two separate reinforced steel brackets on each side of the frame. This is far superior to a single latch bolt and distributes stress across two points on the frame, instead of just one on a single latch bolt. Even if a hydraulically operated door spreader were employed by an attacker, the door itself may bend but the lock mechanism could potentially still hold, thanks to the distributed load over two points on the frame of the door, especially if the door has been constructed with two strong door frame reinforcements. This level of redundancy in the transmission of force makes it possible for a lock to withstand catastrophic impact such as on warehouse emergency exits or heavy equipment garages, and is what ensures the lock doesn't fail before the door itself fails.
Reinforced Housings and Anti-Spread Construction
Not only does mechanical stress comes from intended use but also from unplanned and accidental usage, as well as normal wear and tear on a door and frame. Garage doors are subject to vibration, sideways force from wind and constant expansion and contraction of both door and frame through differing temperature ranges; a robust locking assembly must also withstand this stress without loosening or jamming. This necessitates the inclusion of features designed to resist deformation, such as strengthened housing sections.
The cam locking assemblies from MeiGu, utilize heavily ribbed, and very thick die-cast zinc housings, often three to four millimeters in thickness that have been designed specifically not to deform under clamping loads, the hinges as well as the hook and accessories mounting plates utilize elongated and wide diameter bolt holes for the purpose of absorbing slight, insignificant, movement from both the door and the frame, before the lock housing itself can transfer the stress; this prevents the accumulation of fatigue related wear on the lock hardware itself. Adding a lock housing that doesn't deform prevents additional wear on any locking parts, the door assembly itself becomes stronger. For particularly stringent requirements, hook and accessory mountings also include an anti-spread bracket which stops the door and frame being spread any wider than acceptable, preventing excessive stress on any mounting parts.
Precision Engineering and Certified Testing Under Load
Material choice and design engineering are all irrelevant if the lock kit isn't manufactured with extreme precision to the required tight tolerances. A garage door lock kit must have been tested under heavy load and ideally certified. Key bolt alignment must be precise to a few hundredths of a millimeter. Heat treatment must ensure a hardened shear pin, or that no sheer pins are included at all; and consistent surface treatments must eliminate potential galling under load. Quality manufacturers will combine highly sophisticated CNC machining tools with comprehensive in-house testing processes.
MeiGu, with 15+ years in the CNC machining industry, produces lock hardware to ISO standard tolerances, and routinely tests all their lock hardware for stress, torque (20 nm min before failure), impact (2 kg weight dropped 0.5m onto lock handle, and cycle tested to 50k ops) and any other stress you can think of. If an energy and transportation client wants 3D modeling and mold development to prove their new lock hardware can cope with stress before they build it on their premises; MeiGu have developed, prototyped and tested over 500 bespoke projects for Europe, North America and South-East Asia. Precision machining translates directly to robust engineering for your lock hardware.
Conclusion
If your lock hardware is susceptible to being overwhelmed by stress it's a recipe for a broken, insecure lock, possibly the start of a disaster. Zinc/Aluminum die cast hardware and 316 Stainless steel are perfect for preventing stress failure. A robust, well engineered rod transmission, and reinforced and anti-spread designed housing, as well as meticulous CNC machining to extremely tight tolerances, means that you don't need to worry about your lock hardware, for now anyway. WenZhou MeiGu Lock Industry Co. Ltd. is able to provide exactly this kind of hardware backed with 15 years of experience, producing over 5,000 lock parts daily; their swing handle with rod control as well as any style of custom, stainless steel cam lock, hook and accessories are readily available on their web site. www.meiguLock.com is where you can get your garage door lock hardware for all extreme, and even non-extreme applications.