SPECIALIST DOOR DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE


environments, to ensure that the doorset is firmly held in place. It is important to note that installation methods and specifications can be just as important as the doorset itself; it’s possible to have an extremely strong door, but if it is not suitably installed, it will not perform as required. We were very pleased to confirm that the doorset, incorporating our new Pill & Beverage Hatch, passed the client’s rigorous destructive tests. As a team of perfectionists, we were keen to review the doorset after the destructive test, and to speak to the Trust team that undertook the test. As a result of this dialogue, we gained knowledge that allowed us to make a couple of minor improvements to boost the final specification of the doorset.


Concern over door thickness and weight


Following the discussions with the client in the days after the successful destructive test, the main feedback was very positive; however, there was a little concern about the door’s thickness, and therefore its weight. With the existing building of a particular age, having been built in an area when different building materials were used, we had to step back and give the matter further consideration. With this in mind, our next step was to re-think the door specification, retaining the original key design elements, but allowing the door to work with the existing frames, without us having to disturb the walls within which the frames are installed.


Our thoughts turned at this point to the door’s thickness. The new door was 64 mm thick, while the existing doors were just 54 mm thick, with the frames rebated. We either needed to thin down our new door specification, or to increase the rebate on the existing frames. If we simply increased the rebate on the existing frames, we


performed differently. We are also looking to build and test a thinner, 44 mm thick door to the same specification, so that we can see how such a door performs, should we need to fit one into an existing frame with a 44 mm rebate in future. Testing was carried out in-house, and the doorset put through a recognised testing regime, which sees a minimum of 120 blows with different types of ‘hammer’. The doorset performed excellently, and the door was fully functional afterwards. We then applied the same 120 blows to the opposite side of the door, which meant that now we were beating the door against the lock keep only. Again, the door performed extremely well, and was fully functional afterwards.


The doorset developed and manufactured for Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust – which first approached STJ to organise a ‘brainstorming’ meeting to tackle some service- user behaviour issues it was experiencing in one of its high secure hospital environments.


would not have tackled the weight concerns over the new door, and would thus not have met all the criteria in the client’s brief. We thus needed to re-think the new door specification and work towards a) making it thinner overall, and b) ensuring that the finished door weight was acceptable.


A workable solution


Our 64 mm thick door is made up of seven key material layers. We were confident that we could remove two of these layers without compromising the strength of the door, which would reduce the overall thickness by up to 12 mm. By also changing the door face material, we were sure that our new design would finish with a door 54 mm thick, to suit the existing frames. These changes reduced the door’s overall thickness and weight to meet the Trust’s brief.


STJ Projects harnessed the help of one of its manufacturing partners, a local metal fabrication company, to assist it in the design and manufacture of a pill and beverage hatch.


30


With this new specification finalised, our next step was to undertake numerous tests ‘in-house’ to ensure that the new door would work just as effectively, and to the destructive level required by the Trust. In this new specification we also changed the face finish, and in our test door we used two different wood species of finish, one on each side, which enabled us to determine whether different timber species


Lee Cranidge


Lee Cranidge joined the STJ Projects team in early 2013. His current areas of responsibility include commercial, procurement, sales and marketing, health and safety, and personnel activity.


JULY 2020 | THE NETWORK


As a company that likes to see the extremes of how far our products can be pushed, we spent a further hour applying additional blows with a traditional metal- headed sledge hammer and further attack/pickle blows from both the head and claws of a metal claw hammer. As I am sure you can imagine, the metal sledge hammer did do some damage to the frame, but didn’t cause much additional denting on the door itself. The frame was a standard 32 mm in thickness – much narrower than what would usually be installed in these environments, which may explain the additional damage. After all the blows, including those with the additional metal sledge hammer, the door only suffered edge splitting below the lock case, which is remarkable.


Bringing everything up to date, we are now in discussions with the Trust, confirming the success of the most recent testing and door build design. We are looking forward to manufacturing its replacement, enhanced doors to help the Trust to address the issues it has on this particular site.


n


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38