Red Neck engineering (AKA my garage door opener)

[Jeff Horton]

This looks like Redneck Engineering at it finest! I am not to proud of the way it looks but man it works so SWEET!!

First things first. I have the garage doors in place! I ache and I am exhausted and I am not finished. But I have them in place! And one works.:D:D

One thing I don't understand, I stood these doors in place and marked and trimmed each one. Then put them back in place to check the fit before taking them back to the shop to sand and stain. When I put them back up, the left side fit perfectly. However the right side will not close, they just slightly overlap. I have no idea how that happened either!! 10 minutes with a sharp plane will take care of it.


http://www.kudzupatch.com/woodshop/gdoors/doors.jpg

Now to see if I can't get someone out to paint the house!

Many of you are curious about the door openers. I got my wifes side finished and it worked with no hitches. I see a couple of small things I may improve and make look a little better but at this point I don't think I could make it work any better. :D

http://www.kudzupatch.com/woodshop/gdoors/doors_open.jpg

This was taken as the doors were opening.

http://www.kudzupatch.com/woodshop/gdoors/opener_overall_small.jpg
Click for larger image (http://www.kudzupatch.com/woodshop/gdoors/opener_overall.jpg)

This is an overall photo of the opener mechanism. You see it is very simple construction. My first thoughts were to use angle iron or tubing but I decided wood was easier for me to work with and much lighter weight too.

http://www.kudzupatch.com/woodshop/gdoors/opener_carriage_end.jpg

This is the carriage with the doors open. I just attached a piece of plywood to one of the arms that came with the garage door opener. To that bolted a couple of hinges (yes I have some screws missing in the hinge, just had to try it our first!).

If you missed the previous posts the only modification I made to the garage door opener was take the carriage off the track and turn it 180 degrees so that when it is in the "opening door" cycle it is pushing the carriage toward to the doors instead of pulling (lifting) a regular roll up door.

This way if something trips the light beam across the door the doors will open as they are supposed too. Otherwise when opening the door if one of my pets or a small child ran in while the door was opening, it would reverse and start to close the doors. It could reverse and have trapped or killed them in the doors. Keep that in mind if you decide to try this!!!! THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!

http://www.kudzupatch.com/woodshop/gdoors/opener_door_end.jpg

On the door ends I simply attached hinges to the arms and lag screwed them to the doors. If they ever pull loose I will probably replace the lag screws with carriage bolts. Once painted I doubt the heads will show, but I would rather not have any exposed bolts so I decided to try the lag screws first.

So there you go. Nice and simple and it works perfectly!

[rick fulton]

Wow Jeff, that is fantastic. I've been contemplating the replacement of my overhead garage door with one that "looks" like it swings out, but is still an overhead. But your solution is even better. Way better. Very cool.

Thanks for sharing.
rick

[Per Swenson]

Jeff,

That ain't redneck

Thats brilliant.

Per

[Craig Feuerzeig]

Awesome. You have just solved a problem for me thank you. We recently bought an 80 year old house with 2 car garage... one pair of swinging doors and one pair of missing doors. Can't visualize a roll-up ( or 2), but wanted an opener...love it.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Excellent solution to a problem for a lot of homeowners!

[Allen Bookout]

That is GREAT Jeff. Makes the wheels start up in my head again. Nice to see something new. Allen

[Jerry Olexa]

Nice solution. Very creative. Good job. Not redneck..

[Jack Ferrell]

That is fantastic. I'm impressed.

[Bruce Page]

Redneck or MIT, I'm not sure, but that's some very clever engineering!

The doors look great too!!

[Kelly C. Hanna]

Great idea about the door openers!! I love it. Fantastic job on the doors....they look excellent!

[Vaughn McMillan]

Most excellent job, Jeff, on both the doors and the opener. IIRC, you mentioned that the garage door opener guys asked to see it when it was finished. If they do, I'll bet they will be smacking themselves in the forehead and saying "Why didn't we think of that?!".

- Vaughn

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

I worked at UBC part time in Vancouver Canada, we had an old building that used to be for a motor pool of some sort, they had doors that opened like that, but much larger, with the push of a button.

It was very similar to your system, but slightly different, they had a gate or an eye that the two rails went trough at the end of the track, and the two rails that went to the doors were metal, and they has two curves on them, just slight curves, but they made the doors close tight when closed, and open just a tad further when fully opened.

I don't really see how this would help you, as I see your set up works VERY well, I just wanted to share that this is a great old idea, that you have rediscovered and executed SO well.

If you planed down your rails and painted them, no one would know you build the system yourself, they would think it is some sort of new fancy system :D

Great Job!!

[Dave Fifield]

Sweet setup Jeff, very nicely thought out and implemented. I love the design of the doors too. Nuthin' redneck about any of it IMO.

Cheers,
Dave F.

[Tyler Howell]

Well done Jeff. Lots of curb appeal.:cool:
Picture police seal of approval.

[Jeff Horton]

Thanks everyone for the compliments and comments. This is not a new idea, just a recycled old one. Something very similar is used on boat house doors all around the lake. Typically they are controlled by a rope and some pulleys. I just made it 'hi-tech' :D LOL

Craig and anyone else, if you do this make sure you buy a chain drive opener so you can make the safety mechanism work correctly. (BTW this probably voids any warranty. Even though I didn't really modify them, I just put them together backwards.) If you can not for some reason make it push on the open cycle, I would recommend finding a way to bypass the electronic eyes. The more I think about it the more dangerous I see it being if it is not working properly. I think it would be much safer to not have it than for it to be working backwards. The safest way is to have it working properly!!

And of course I want to see pictures!!


If you planed down your rails and painted them, no one would know you build the system yourself, they would think it is some sort of new fancy system :D
One of the things I am going to do is stain the rails to 'camouflage' them. The first thing I noticed when I opened them was how the raw wood stood out. Might as well been painted orange. I decided right then I needed to stain them to match the doors. Even thought it doesn't matter, I want to take the large piece of plywood down and make it smaller. It just looks ugly to me. On the other one I will take a bit more time to make it look nice. I will probably build replacement pieces for the other side at the same time. I am kind of vain when it comes to my house/woodworking.:rolleyes:

One thing I have to install is .... well not sure what to call them. The doors at the top pull right against a strip I installed. So they are nice and even. But when closed the bottom left side door stands a little proud of the right one. There is nothing there for them to 'bump' into. My neighbor came by and she said I was being picky. But I put a lot of work in these and I want to be close evenly. :rolleyes:

So I made a couple of blocks with a curve on them that will attach on the back of each door. As the close these blocks will guide the bottom of the doors together so they close evenly. I post a photo once I get them in place as I know I am not describing this well at all.

[Bob Rufener]

What a clever method of opening a door. I've never seen something like this before and your pictures make it clear as to how it functions. BRAVO!! It's amazing what the human mind can come up with when the challenge is there. Well done!

[Mark Pruitt]

Nice and simple and it works perfectly!

Nice and simple--yes.
Brilliant--yes.
Redneck--NO.

Great job. I'm impressed!
Mark

[Jim O'Dell]

Jeff, I love the doors. Great design! And the ingenuity for the opener is awsome. Congrats! You dun good! Jim.

[Fred Voorhees]

Have to admit - - - I'm impressed. Nice job and very inventive.

[Michael Gibbons]

I probably wouldn't have thought of that on my best day:confused: . Maybe you should patented it. Good Job.

[Bart Leetch]

"If the ladies don't find you handsome they should at least find you handy"

[Chris Rosenberger]

Excellect job Jeff. I had to save this post for future reference.
You need to apply for a patent.

[Jeff Nolan]

Very nicely done.

One idea you might consider is replacing the arms with steel tubing and adjustable bar ends, in which case you might actually be able to get rid of the wood plate that attaches to the traveler, bolting the arms directly to it instead. Not only would the provide a level of adjustment to the whole mechanism and allow fine tuning of the fit, but it would reduce the mass of the mechanism and greatly clean up how it looks when the doors are open.

[Jim Becker]

That ain't redneck

Thats brilliant.

I totally agree! Very kewel!

[Keith Barkhau]

Jeff,

I'm with Per--definitely NOT redneck! Not only a creative design, but one with an eye for safety. And the doors--drop dead gorgeous.

So one question: After getting through it once, would you do it again?

[Pete Harbin]

That is way cool Jeff! Nice piece of engineering.

Pete

[Teri Lu]

Congratulations Jeff!

Beautiful doors! Finally someone has done it.

I had the same idea for the door opener after watching a "This Old House" and a "Hometime" projects in which the garge doors looked like classic carrige house doors but morphed into sectional overhead type doors. Except for folks in snow country that want to open their garage, err ... shop, in winter snow, I wondered why not just have them swing out and adapt a standard garage door opener. I didn't think about the problem of reversing directions but I suppose some motor wiring modifications would fix that.

BTW, my favorite "redneck engineering" material is steel electrical conduit tubing, emt, with mashed ends and drilled for nuts and bolts to connect pieces. Strong and CHEAP!

-- Teri

[Jeff Horton]

So one question: After getting through it once, would you do it again?
Absolutely yes!!

As with any project there are a couple of things I would do differently. But they were things I only learned by doing them. But I would not hesitate to do another set! Matter of fact, my basement/studio has a garage door and I keep thinking how nice a set of these would be down there. :)

But, I have perfectly good insulated roll up door and no one but me see's it. I just can't waste that money but it's still tempting.

[Steve Clardy]

Really nice Jeff. Enjoyed following your garage door posts.
Looks great!!

[Chris Barton]

Being a life long resident of the south, I just want to let you know that redneck and brilliant can be used together. Being one doesn't exclude the other...

[R Mousel]

These look awesome and have wanted to do something similar when I build a garage to match our 100 y/o house. I haven't followed the whole ordeal but was concerned with some of the safety features-mainly the sensors to reverse it.
I didn't really think of this or realize why all residential doors are overhead until I saw yours completed. When the doors swing shut, there is an area that can cause trapping several feet outside of the garage. Say you are standing in the middle as the doors are closing, but maybe 2 feet into the driveway, more or less depending on the size of the person. You can still get caught in this area and you won't trip the electronic eye. Hopefully the opener will sense an obstruction that will reverse it.
Can you comment if this is successful in sensing an object/person when the door meets resistance? If you set it to the most sensitive will it still operate without false tripping. I thought about the optical sensors mounted to the ends of the door, but would require some sort of mechanism to rotate them as they open. How about a pressure sensor like elevators have, or a "Door Stop" like the SawStop. Sorry, just want to make sure no little ones get injured.

[Ted Jay]

Jeff,
Why couldn't you just mount the garage door opener on the ceiling backwards? With the motor closest to the doors and the chain mechanism pointing into the garage. Then you don't have to reverse the chain. When you open the door the latch moves towards the doors, opening them. It's a thought.
And they look good, way to go!!

[Doug McLauchlan]

The doors look great and the adaptation of the opener is ingenious !

I had a thought about the safety of swinging doors vs overheads. The main injury causing force I see with an overhead door would be the weight of the door itself pressing down on any person or object in its path. With the swinging doors, assuming they are moving at a relatively gentle pace, the force would be from the opener pulling the doors closed.

Is that not likely to be much less force than with the overhead door situation ? How about a test with a garbage can or similar ?

[Jeff Horton]

Can you comment if this is successful in sensing an object/person when the door meets resistance? If you set it to the most sensitive will it still operate without false tripping.
Garage door openers, well all that I am aware of, have a pressure sensor. Well it probably senses the amp load on the motor and they do have sensitivity adjustments. Since I just got this operational yesterday I have not played with that yet but I do plan too. I assume since I have such a small load on mine that I should be able to adjust it to the maximum level without a problem. I will just take the remote and stand the driveway and grab the door as it closes and see what happens. No danger of me being caught that way.

If a child were to stop as they walked in before they tripped the beam it is possible they could get caught. But by the time the door opening gets that small odds are they would be bumped by the door and knocked into the path of the beam. But I agree that this could be an issue, and if the sensitivity is adjusted properly it would probably only mean a bruise and a good scare. Since I don't have kids this wasn't a problem, but I will post what I find out when I try this.


Why couldn't you just mount the garage door opener on the ceiling backwards?
Thats a clever idea! I don't see a problem with that either. Swapping the chain around was simple to do. But I don't see why you couldn't do that.

:D Just pictured the installer saying "YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT??"

[Ted Jay]

Thats a clever idea! I don't see a problem with that either. Swapping the chain around was simple to do. But I don't see why you couldn't do that.


That would still enable the safety beam to still be operational when the doors are closing, which is the only time the beam is active during door operation.
That way no modifications to the opener is done. Does that mean it would still be under warranty???

[Kevin Herber]

That has to be the cleverest thing I've seen in quite some time. Very cool. I strongly suggest you write it up and submit it to magazines. I bet you could make some money off it. I wonder if you could patent it. I can see garage door opener companies jumping on the idea.

Outstanding example of thinking outside the box.

-- Kevin

[tod evans]

pretty slick jeff! ain`t nuthin` wrong with redneck! i are one:) ..02 tod

[Jeff Horton]

That would still enable the safety beam to still be operational when the doors are closing, which is the only time the beam is active during door operation.
That way no modifications to the opener is done. Does that mean it would still be under warranty???
Jay, all the safety equipment including photo cells work now. By flipping the carriage around all I did was make it push in the open cycle and pull in the close cycle. With a roll up door it just opposite. It pulls to open and pushes to close.

I am not certain that I voided the warranty on them. What I did could not possibly damage the unit. I am just assuming if the factory saw it they could use that as an excuse to get out of warranty repairs. Saying it was not installed properly (the way they intended for it to be).

If you installed the openers backwards they could make the same argument, that you didn't install them the way they were intended. Therefore the warranty is void.

So you pay your money and take you chances!

[Rich Torino]

Great job... First of all the doors are first rate and the opener is extremely creative......

[Art Mulder]

That would still enable the safety beam to still be operational when the doors are closing, which is the only time the beam is active during door operation.
That way no modifications to the opener is done. Does that mean it would still be under warranty???

Ted... Just thinking out loud here... I don't think your suggestion would work. If you look at those photos, the traveler has to get pretty close to the opening, in order to push the doors all the way open.

If you mount the opener backwards (motor above the opening) then you lose about 14-18" (I'm guessing) of clearance which is taken up by the body of the opener. Maybe you could get around that by having a real long tongue on the traveler to protrude under the opener.

[Jeff Sudmeier]

Jeff, great name and great job on the doors!

Even without the safety beam the pressure sensor will stop the doors from crushing someone. It doesn't take a whole lot to stop my door from opening or closing...

[Jerry Ingraham]

I've been anticipating the pic's of that setup. That borders on ingenious because of it's simplicity!

[Frank Chaffee]

Jeff,
Very cool linkage! That you can adapt a readily available mechanism to your classically styled carriage house doors is laudable, and loudly so.

Never having had a garage, much less a contrivance for causing its doors to open and close under power other than my own, I am not familiar with the range or sensitivity of either the delta-load or photo sensors you have.

I wonder if the load sensor on opener doors such as this, since it is designed to reverse motor direction when the closing door encounters an obstruction and the load on the motor is suddenly *lessened* (remember that gravity is an increasing factor in the lowering of an overhead door), will be able to sense all situations of obstruction in this application.

Specifically, from the geometry of your linkage, we can see that the final output of mechanical advantage to the door ranges from about 0.5 when it first begins to close the open doors, to 1.0 at the final point of closure. I would expect that your load sensor would detect any significant obstruction that the doors would encounter.

What concerns me is the power of the doors to exert a pinching effect in the last degrees of closure, when the leverage of the pull of the motor at 90° to the load is 1.0, but the leverage at 90° to that load approaches infinity, and the increase in load is zero.

Maybe something to check or be aware of, I sure don’t know.

Frank

[Ted Jay]

Ted... Just thinking out loud here... I don't think your suggestion would work. If you look at those photos, the traveler has to get pretty close to the opening, in order to push the doors all the way open.

If you mount the opener backwards (motor above the opening) then you lose about 14-18" (I'm guessing) of clearance which is taken up by the body of the opener. Maybe you could get around that by having a real long tongue on the traveler to protrude under the opener.

You may have a point, and a good idea for a longer tongue if you lose the clearance.
Also if you didn't have a chain drive, and wanted to convert a screw drive without buying a new one, you could install it backwards and it should work.
Just in case someone else decides to give it a try.

[Jeff Horton]

If you look at those photos, the traveler has to get pretty close to the opening, in order to push the doors all the way open.

Arm length and the location you mount them on the doors has a huge effect on travel (and speed they open). I drew several options and was quite surprised at the differences. I decided to go this way because it kept the doors opening at a slower speed, similar to an overhead door would.

[Jeff Horton]

Also if you didn't have a chain drive, and wanted to convert a screw drive without buying a new one, you could install it backwards and it should work.

No doubt you could make it work. Just need to work out the mechanics of the arms and mounting points. Probably would just need to lengthen the arms and move the mounts on the door closer to the middle of the doors. The closer you get to the hinge the faster the door opens (because you have less distance to move the door).

[Lopaka Garcia]

You should patent the design before someone else does if it doesn't already exist somewhere. Either that or you could sell plans for it on the internet.

[Jeff Horton]

I got the other side done and I made new brackets for both sides and painted them. They look 100% better! Now when the doors are open they don't stand out.

This has to be my favorite project ever. I shouldn't admit this but last night after I finished my side up and cleaned up all the tools, screws, bolts (amazing how many tools and how much hardware I had in the garage) I went out front with the remote. I can hit one button and both doors open at once. Since I live in a rural area I just stood there and opening and closing both doors. First time I have giggled years. :cool:

http://www.kudzupatch.com/woodshop/gdoors/photo7.jpg

[Kelly C. Hanna]

And a well deserved giggle I might add. That's one of the neatest ideas I have ever seen. If you can do it...patent the idea right now. With all the new homes around here trying to mimic carriage doors, you could make a fortune!! Wanna quit yer day job and be a full time redneck enjinear? :D:D:D

[Mark Rios]

YEAH, YEAH, YEAH.......very clever. But this amateur has has picked out one MAJOR, FATAL flaw in this contraption that all you "REAL" woodworkers seem to have missed entirely.......................




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Wood movement. Those doors aren't going to close at all once all that wood in those closer arms has swelled/shrank. Then where are you going to be, huh? Snowstorms inside your garage 'cause the doors won't close, that's where.

:D :D :D :D :D


Okay, Okay...I'm done being envious. (Just teasin'. Please don't hurt me)


Really, really nice job of ingenuity, Jeff. I told the guys working on the house across the street about this project of yours and they were totally impressed. Very well done.

[Brad Schafer]

i'd think this thread (combined with 34713) would almost be worthy of a formal "Creek article". this is very slick - took me a minute to figure out what you meant by "reversed the carriage" but once light dawned on marblehead, the whole thing made sense.

a redneck with no boat, :D

b