The present invention relates to an elevator safety gear arrangement as defined in the preamble of claim 1.

Especially small children, who cannot watch out and have small fingers, run the risk of accidentally inserting their fingers into the chink of an elevator door, i.e. into the gap between two door panels sliding with respect to each other or between a door panel and the door frame. The width of such a chink or gap is typically 5 - 6 mm, and a smaller gap is difficult to achieve because the tolerances required in manufacture and operation do not allow it.

Children are usually excited with the moving object and while waiting for the coming of the lift, they trend to put their small hand on the lift's glass door panel which normally installed in the shopping malls. When the lift cage comes at the floor, the lift's door shall be command to open by the lift's controller. The friction between the children's hand and the surface of the glass door panel will be high enough to drag the children's hand to the gap between the door's frame and the panel. The chil- dren's hand will be hurt, as the gap is so small that could cause serious hurt to the children's hand.

To solve this problem, light cells and other electric sensors have been used. A drawback with these is that they involve delays, as a result of which the door can not stop in time. Moreover, in a critical situation they may fail to function reliably, in particular, the large weight of glass doors involves a special risk as they continue moving by virtue of their mass even if the sen- sors should have responded, sensors are also subject to vandalism as they are esςposed to sight and susceptible to malicious damage or interference. Therefore, they also involve significant maintenance and repair costs.

A prior-art solution is also presented in patent specification US 5794745. The finger guard according to this patent comprises a brush-like strip attached to the edge of the door frame on the side facing toward the door opening, which strip, being mounted in an obliquely out¬ ward directed orientation against the door surface/ cov¬ ers and closes the gap between the door and the frame at least from direct sight. This solution does not prevent fingers from getting into the gap but only arouses the person to quickly draw his/her hand away if the fingers touch the brush. Another disadvantage in this solution is surface-mounted installation and visibility of the struc- ture, which means that it is susceptible to damage and vandalism. Moreover, the structure reduces the size of the door opening especially if the doors can move to a position completely outside or flush with the door open¬ ing delimited by the frame. Besides, this structure is difficult to apply between two door panels because in that case it directly reduces the size of the door open¬ ing and forms edges or flanges that may catch elevator passengers or objects carried along.

There are several kinds of prior-art solutions, which are presented for example in patent applications GB 2244751, WO 00/50331 and WO 01/62655.

The object of the invention is to eliminate the above- mentioned problems. A specific object of the invention is to disclose a finger guard for elevator doors that is as invisible and inconspicuous and as possible and yet com¬ pletely prevents fingers from getting into the gap be¬ tween a sliding door of an elevator and the stop face of a profiled edging strip.

The idea of the invention was came from one of the re- quirement of the European's lift code ENSl-I.1998, which required a device to be installed on every lift's glass landing door and lift cage door panel installation, to avoid the dragging of young children's hand trapped in the gap between the lift's glass door panel and the door frame, by sensing the presence of the fingers.

As for the features characteristic of the invention, reference is made to the claims.

The safety device of the invention is characterized by what is disclosed in the characterization part of claim 1. Other embodiments of the invention are characterized by what is disclosed in the other claims. Inventive embodiments are also presented in the description part of this application. The inventive content of the present application can also be defined in other ways than is done in the claims below. The inventive content may also consist of several separate inventions, especially if the invention is considered in the light of escpressions or implicit sub-tasks or in view of advantages or sets of advantages achieved. In this case, some of the attributes contained in the claims below may be superfluous in re¬ spect of separate inventive concepts.

By applying the invention, one or more of the following advantages, among others, can be achieved

In modern city, shopping center provides an opportunity of family gathering. Children bring along by the parents for shopping. In the shopping center, there are many invisible traps that could cause unforeseeable accident.

The scenic lift installed inside the shopping center usually ecguipped with the glass door can be considered one of those invisible traps. The children usually ex¬ cited by the moving object, they like to stand in front of the glass door panel and put their hand on the surface of the glass door panel when seeing the moving lift in¬ side the lift shaft. When the lift cage is at floor, the door will be opened for passenger to be get out from the lift cage. The hand of the children might be dragged by the door panel and trapped into the gap between the door panel and the frame and get hurt. In many case, the chil¬ dren's hand can be retreated by minimal effort. But/ in some case, the accident could cause serious hurt to the children's hand.

The installation of the invention could minimize the accident happened to children. When the finger trapped is detected, the opening door could be command to stop and avoid further injury to the children's hand. This is a safety features that could help to minimize the accident of injury within the shopping center and parents are more confident and willing to bring their children to visit the shopping center. In return, more opportunity could be bring in for the shops.

In more accurate terms, the safety device of the inven¬ tion is characterized by what is disclosed in the charac¬ terisation part of claim 1. The features of certain pre- ferred embodiments of the invention are disclosed in the sub-claims.

As compared with prior art, the safety device of the invention provides significant advantages. The finger guard has a very simple structure and is reliable in operation/ so it is advantageous in respect of both in¬ stallation and use. In addition, in spite of its good performance, the finger guard can be so mounted as to be almost completely hidden from sight, so it does not re- duce the size of the door opening or impede passage through the door opening in any way, nor is it suscepti¬ ble to vandalism. A further advantage is that the finger guard is easy to retrofit in elevators already in use.

The presence of the finger in the gap between the door panel and the door frame if detected, the lift controller could command to stop the lift door from opening in order to avoid the children's hand being drag further into the gap and get .serious hurt. The invention is a sensor com¬ posed of four items, which could be installed on the door's frame to detect the presence of the object, e.g. finger.

In the following, the invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings, wherein

FIG 1 is side view of the finger protection sensor,

FIG 2 presents section A-A of FIG 1,

FIG 3 presents cross section of the lift landing door,

FIG 4 shows the fixing of the sensor into the door's frame,

FIG 5 presents cross section view of the opening door, and

FIG 6 presents Section E-B of FlG 5.

The figures present construction of a safety device for an elevator. Figure 1 and 2, shows the construction of the developed sensor, which consists of four items, namely

1- Infrared transmitter 2- Rubber tube 3- Infrared receiver 4- Aluminium fixing tube

The finger protection sensor has four items, including infrared sensor, consisted of a pair of transmitter 1 and receiver 3. The infrared sensor, are housed into the rubber tube 2. The rubber tube 2 of certain length is inserted into an Aluminium open tube 4 for maintaining the straightness and for fixing the whole assembly into the door's frame.

The sensor is working as an electronic non-contact switch, At one end, an infrared transmitter inside the rubber tube transmit continually the coded signal by infrared, receiver at the other end receive the signal and measure the time difference between the signal trans¬ mission for checking the continuity of the connection.

The rubber tube serve as passage of the transmission, the transmission will be unsuccessful if the passage is blocked or under certain level of obstruction by an ex¬ ternal object. If the receiver cannot receive the com¬ plete piece of signal within certain time, the transmis¬ sion will be considered incomplete and a signal will be output from the interface hardware, for warning of cir¬ cuit is incomplete due to obstruction.

An Aluminium open tube, is used for maintaining the rub¬ ber tube standing in straight line for guarantee the passage of the infrared transmission without any obstruc¬ tion.

The sensor is applied in the lift's door system where a pair of sensor is installed on the door's frame as in figure 3. A gap about 6 mm is in between landing door panel and the sensor's body. Figure 4, shows the fixing of the sensor into the Poor's frame. The infrared transmitter and. receiver are in¬ stalled inside the rubber tube about 2.1 m in length. The infrared transmitter and receiver are located inside the rubber tube.

Waen there is a finger or an object trapped in the gap between the rubber tube and the opening door as in figure 5 and 6-

Figure 5 and 6 showing that the passage for the infrared transmission is obstructed, the signal transmission will be incomplete and an output signal will send from the interface hardware to the lift's controller to command to stop the opening of the door. The output from interface hardware effective only if the lift's cage is not travel¬ ling and standing at the floor, also the sensor at that floor is being obstructed by an object*

If the finger or the obstruction is cleared, the infrared receiver can receive the signal" again. The output signal from the interface hardware will be clear, the lift door and the lift operation will resume to normal.

It is obvious to the person skilled in the art that dif¬ ferent embodiments of the invention are not limited to the examples described above, but that they may be varied within the scope of the claims presented below. For in¬ stance/ the number of door leaves restricted. The number of safety devices per door is no either restricted and nor is the construction of the safety device. Several different construction methods can be used taking into account the limitation of claims. It is obvious to the skilled person that the linkage and/or actuating equip- ment of the door mechanism can be implemented in other ways than those presented in the examples, e.g. by using various mounting arrangements both concerning the safety device and the door itself. Various materials are also available to every details of this invention. Zn the foregoing, the invention has been described by way of example with reference to the attached drawings while different embodiments of the invention are possible in the scope of the inventive idea defined in the claims.