This automatic gate closes on a 24 foot wide driveway (two car) and swivels around a corner. The custom design has an aluminum frame and stainless steel wheels that ride a semi-circle galvanized steel track. Its driven by a DC motor via rack and pinion and has two guide rails: one on top and another close to the bottom.
Zack Nootens at Preamble Design and Fabrication designed and fabricated this gate. I designed and fabricated the stainless steel casters on which it rides. If you’re interested in a similar solution Zack can be reached at (760) 453-5317.
We started the build with the panel frames. This is 1/8 inch wall 2 x 2 inch aluminum tubing. Most panels for the gate are 4 feet wide by 6 feet tall.
The last panel is a 20 footer. It keeps the gate in contact with the guides and motor as well as provides support while closed. It just barely fit in the shop. It looks crooked in this photo but I promise its square, plum and true.
The hinges were originally welded to the frame, but later changed to a custom bolt-on hinge. In order for the hinges to line up properly between two panels they were welded to both panels with the pin inside. Here is the 20 foot end panel with the next one in line.
Next we worked on the gate guide motor mount assembly. Its a 6 foot tall A-frame structure made out of 4 x 4 inch steel tubing. These are the feet for mounting to the studs sticking out of the concrete. The slots gave us plenty of adjustment when it came time for installation.
This is the gate guide motor mount assembly. Running out of room as usual. The bridgeport doesn't care though.
304 stainless steel wheel blanks. The first wheel was made on the hardinge prior to owning the mori lathe. That's why they are single wheel blanks here. The hardinge lacked rigidity to use the insert cutoff blade for roughing out the inner track shape so I had to use the radius cutter, which is basically the finishing tool, for the whole operation. Rather tedious.
Now that's more like it! The mori had no trouble removing the bulk of the material with this insert cutoff blade. I ended up keeping the blanks as a set of two wheels so I had something to hold on to in the lathe. This worked out very well. I cranked out the rest of the wheels in the time it took me to make one on the hardinge.
Once I was done roughing both the wheels I just used the same tool to part them off.
I still used the hardinge for the final operations. The wheels needed a through hole for mounting hardware and recesses for bearings. With the through hole I was able to mount the wheel to a custom holder so the jaws wouldn't get in the way of the radius cutter. The radius cutter was the last operation and left an absolutely beautiful finish.
Before (left) and after (right) using the radius cutter.
Here are the parts I made for the rest of the custom stainless steel caster.
The two assemblies get welded together and connected via bearings and snap rings. I had to be super quick while welding because stainless is a terrible heat conductor and a large amount of warping can easily occur.
