Elevator Equipment Before and After Modernization— Controllers, Machine Rooms, Cartops

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Hi. This is Andy Kohl with TEC, The Elevator Consultants.

[00:00:04]We're taking a look at a job that was done in 2012.

[00:00:08]And it's now being modernized.

[00:00:12]We're in Chicago, 55 story building.

[00:00:15]Formerly it was modernized with smart rise and dispatching and other issues that led to this current modernization.

[00:00:24]We have an old Otis equipment out here, and we'll show you what is being done with it.

[00:00:32]When the mod was done in 2012, it was just basically recoded.

[00:00:40]Nothing was really done inside of the field pieces or armature or commutator.

[00:00:47]We have smart rise controls here. And.

[00:00:54]The dispatching has been a real trouble going for this building since day one.

[00:01:01]So we'll take a look at what we've done on the first elevator that's been done in this three car group.

[00:01:10]First off, this is how it looks today rope gripper is mounted here instead of in the secondary.

[00:01:18]Much safer I can get to it and it's just a better application.

[00:01:24]The sheaves were rebore the secondary, below which you can’t see everything was redone with the sheaves and recabled.

[00:01:37]Breaks completely redone and rebuilt.

[00:01:42]That was something on this older machine that really needed to be done and that has been done.

[00:01:48]Field pieces were all cleaned up.

[00:01:50]And re-lacquered.

[00:01:54]And we'll go to the other side of the machine.

[00:01:59]And here.

[00:02:02]Everything was pulled out of here, cleaned up, interpoles were pulled, taken out and then redone and brought back in.

[00:02:13]Commutator cleaned all my ratings.

[00:02:16]Everything else is new.

[00:02:18]All new hardware and everything cleaned up.

[00:02:22]So now I have another 30 years on this machine, which is really nice.

[00:02:30]This machine goes 700ft per minute.

[00:02:34]And if you can.

[00:02:35]Look, I didn't talk about a cross cancellation, but we're already dispatching just with one car of the three done, we're dispatching already significantly better.

[00:02:46]One thing that has been told to us is the cars are coming into the floor and out of the floor.

[00:02:54]Basically, they're leveling much faster and they're leaving much faster.

[00:02:59]So people in this building think they spent the elevators up, which they didn’t, they are just leaving and getting to the floor quicker.

[00:03:07]But we have the same machines.

[00:03:08]We just have a different control system, control system that's been put on.

[00:03:14]This is the group control, but it's motion I-box.

[00:03:19]That's whats been set up here.

[00:03:21]This is my group. It is set up.

[00:03:29]And here is my new control system.

[00:03:34]This.

[00:03:40]You can see everything nice, neat, wired.

[00:03:46]It's really got nice.

[00:03:52]Okay.

[00:03:53]We're taking a look at the second car being done.

[00:03:55]This is the.

[00:03:58]These are the service cars.

[00:04:00]We have one of the service cars being completed at this time.

[00:04:04]This service car is 2 to 1, double wrapped and running at 500ft per minute.

[00:04:12]The smaller machine.

[00:04:15]So very similar to work done to it.

[00:04:20]Sheaves redone.

[00:04:28]Sheaves underneath, the deflector, secondary, Redone also.

[00:04:34]Bearings were done on the sheaves.

[00:04:35]I didn't mention that on the other one, but buried deep down on the sheaves.

[00:04:40]And then obviously cable gripper mounted here.

[00:04:46]This one we can kind of show you the difference of mounting my rope gripper here on the existing car.

[00:04:55]My rope gripper is mounted in the secondary.

[00:05:01]I would say I'm ready for a cable job also.

[00:05:04]So this is. We're perfect timing on this.

[00:05:07]But you can just see this machine.

[00:05:11]This was done 12 or 14 years ago.

[00:05:15]And they didn't really they didn't do much to it.

[00:05:20]They did re-lacquer it.

[00:05:25]But my brakes were not redone.

[00:05:31]So my whole brake assembly, all of this is not redone.

[00:05:37]Everything is just basically re-lacquered in here.

[00:05:39]But that was it.

[00:05:42]And we can really see the difference now.

[00:05:46]Of this you can see all my new hardware for my breaks.

[00:05:53]Everything is it's all rebuilt or replaced.

[00:06:01]So it's really nice inside here.

[00:06:03]Same thing. I didn't just re-lacquer.

[00:06:07]We pulled the intervals out and redid them and then brought them back in.

[00:06:14]Sheaves were done on site and everything.

[00:06:18]Obviously re-lacquered for my field pieces and cleaned up.

[00:06:24]Armature was just cleaned.

[00:06:26]It was fine.

[00:06:28]And then my commutator redone.

[00:06:31]And then all new hardware for that.

[00:06:32]My brushes.

[00:06:35]So really nice job this one again.

[00:06:40]My group controller over here is up is running.

[00:06:45]I got I box here again.

[00:06:51]These are just turned over.

[00:06:53]We haven't even punched this job yet, but it's really a much nicer shape than it was.

[00:07:01]And we're really happy with the results so far.

[00:07:05]One of the things that has crept up on us on this job is.

[00:07:13]Had to redo grounding.

[00:07:16]So I had to read ground because these parts were not properly grounded.

[00:07:23]And when you're going through a modernization, you're chasing problems a lot.

[00:07:28]And found out we had a grounding problem, which really it set out fire service on the entire all banks just by doing one ground on one elevator here.

[00:07:39]So a lot of different things we looked at and why we are replacing this equipment.

[00:07:48]Okay.

[00:07:49]Take a look at the top.

[00:07:52]Top. A lot of things have been replaced.

[00:07:55]Door operator here replaced with GAL MOVFE linear door operator.

[00:08:02]My roller guides here and here have been completely rebuilt.

[00:08:07]These are the original Otis style with rebuilt.

[00:08:12]So these are from the 1960s, rebuilt with springs, new rollers, a whole new kit encoder here load wear on the car top we have obviously the alarm bell and the fan, but we have the Manda tech system for running the car lights.

[00:08:39]So emergency lighting is the cab lighting.

[00:08:42]There's no little small emergency light inside the cab.

[00:08:46]The cab lights go on on the front of the cab.

[00:08:51]That's really it here.

[00:08:54]Took off some weight, took off weight on the counterweight.

[00:08:59]Just one. One bar.

[00:09:01]So not a lot of weight change on this car, but we'll see. It runs really nice at this point.

[00:09:08]So a lot of work done on the cartop.

[00:09:15]This is a side that is not done.

[00:09:17]My ladder is right in right on the side.

[00:09:21]Yeah.

[00:09:22]Toe guard comes right here right in front of me.

[00:09:25]We're going to put a piece here to make sure we don't get hit by the tow guard.

[00:09:32]But the ladder will come right here.

[00:09:39]And this will be all cleaned up and beautified.

[00:09:43]In a few months.