Choosing an Industrial Door Motor: Torque, Phase and Control Unit
Published:
Publisher: Alkur Kapı Sistemleri A.Ş.
In garage motor selection the question is “how heavy is the door?”; on the industrial side the equation grows: torque class, supply phase, daily cycle count and control-unit pairing are considered together. Let’s take these four axes in order, through the r-tec industrial door motors range.
Torque: The force that turns the shaft
On an industrial sectional door the motor does not pull the door by a cable; it couples to the spring shaft and turns it (shaft drive). That is why the unit is not the newton but the newton-metre. The SIRIUS family has two core classes: the 10024 TCE (100 Nm torque, 0.37 kW) drives standard industrial openings; the 14017 TCE (140 Nm torque, 0.55 kW, 17 cm/s shaft speed) is the motor of hangars and large-gauge doors. Both track position with an electronic limit switch — the wear problem of mechanical limit switches disappears.
The trade-off between torque and speed
The difference between the two SIRIUS classes is not an upgrade but a trade-off: where the 10024 TCE delivers 100 Nm at 24 cm/s, the 14017 TCE rises to 140 Nm but drops to 17 cm/s, with power going from 0.37 kW to 0.55 kW. The torque gained on a large door is bought with passage speed.
The decision follows once leaf weight and door height have been calculated. On standard industrial openings the 10024 is both sufficient and faster; on hangar-type doors, leaf weight governs and the 14017 is required. Where speed cannot solve the passage time, a partial-open setting takes over: the leaf stops at the width the vehicle needs and travels fully only when required.
Phase: Why is 380 V three-phase the standard?
For motors working continuously under load, three-phase supply means balanced current and cooler running. SIRIUS motors are fed by 380 V three-phase; routing the three-phase line to the opening should be planned together with the electrical infrastructure at the design stage.
Phase sequence and phase loss on three-phase
On a three-phase motor the order in which the phases are connected sets the direction of rotation; connected in reverse, the door travels towards closing on an open command. The I-380 control board checks phase sequence automatically and prevents operation in the wrong order, which removes the job of swapping cables to hunt for direction during installation.
The board also cuts the circuit on a lost phase. That protection is not incidental: a three-phase motor running on two phases suffers winding damage before long. The board’s phase warning should not be passed over at commissioning.
Control unit: The motor’s brain
The same motor takes on a different character with different control units:
- I-380 — wall-type cabinet; 1.5 kW output, current protection, phase-sequence and low-voltage monitoring. The standard partner of the NORMTOR industrial sectional door.
- 220-K — contactor-based drive; a simple solution for contactor scenarios.
- 380A — the open-board version; for panel-mount projects integrated into the facility’s fuse cabinet.
- GIGA Sedo — the premium class; LCD menu, multi-door management over RS485, induction loop and traffic light integration.
On the high-speed PVC side the logic changes: the RAPID 85 motor is driven by the FU frequency inverter, which produces a three-phase output from a single-phase 220 VAC input — that pairing is the source of the high opening speed and the soft stop.
Electronic limit switches and the encoder ceiling
A mechanical limit switch breaks the circuit when the door physically contacts a trip lever; it is set by hand and drifts over time with vibration. An electronic limit switch counts position from the drive shaft, is taught through the board, and needs no mechanical contact, so drift is eliminated. Settings such as an intermediate position or partial opening also become possible.
In return, the learning procedure has to be completed correctly at commissioning; left half done, the door does not recognise its limits. There is also a ceiling: on the GYK-92 SY the encoder counts at most 20 turns. The number of turns between the open and closed positions follows from door height and drum diameter, and where that exceeds 20, the unit cannot learn the position fully. On tall doors the drum group and motor pairing is therefore verified together.
What happens during a power cut?
On a shaft-driven arrangement the leaf cannot be pushed by hand, so the motor carries a chain mechanism and the door is moved with it during an outage. On industrial doors this has to be planned for evacuation and emergency egress.
The point most often missed on site is the chain’s accessibility: a chain that ends up behind racking, pallets or machinery is of no use in an outage. Its drop length and position should be settled during installation. Before switching to manual, confirm the supply really is off, and do not touch the chain while the door is moving.
Where no motor is wanted, a chain hoist (manual chain operation) can be applied according to door dimensions.
Cycle count: The quiet decider
Thirty openings a day and three hundred openings a day do not tire the same hardware equally. Usage intensity affects the motor class, the control unit and the spring-life selection together. That is why the quotation stage asks about your daily cycle profile as much as your opening dimensions.
The intersection of the four axes lands somewhere different in every project; that is the part that takes experience rather than a formula. The full motor and control range is on the automation systems page — and for pairing questions, the contact form is the shortest route.
How do you work out the cycle count?
Usage intensity is the item most often absent from a catalogue comparison, yet it governs selection as much as motor power. The duty cycle of the GYK-92 SY control unit is given as S2 20 percent: the motor can run under load for at most 20 percent of a 10 minute window and needs the rest of that time to cool. That leaves roughly 2 minutes of travel in every 10.
To make it concrete: if one cycle takes 30 seconds for opening and closing together, that comes to four cycles per 10 minutes. On a door running back to back at shift changeover, the limit fills quickly and the 120 °C thermal protection trips and stops the door.
Count the peak hour, not the daily average
Dividing the entrance’s daily vehicle count into an average is misleading; cycles cluster at shift start, the lunch break and dispatch times. The sound method is to count cycles at the peak hour and assess them with a factor of two. Thermal protection is a last resort rather than design margin, and selection should not lean on it.
Motor and control board are decided together
The order runs like this: leaf weight and door size give the torque class, the supply on site (220 V single phase or 380 V three phase) narrows the board family, and usage intensity plus monitoring needs decide whether you move to the premium board.
Since changing the board later means redoing the cabling and the limit learning, settling it at project stage is more economical. The range holds six control units, with output power varying between 0.75 and 2.2 kW depending on the board. GIGA Sedo is recommended on large doors because it holds a readable fault message and an event history on its display and allows remote reading over RS485; where downtime is expensive, reading the code rather than guessing at it shortens commissioning and maintenance.
