ANACAM MAGAZINE - n.3 luglio | settembre 2021

63 want to take stock of this important component of the lift. Legislative Decree 31 August 1945 n. 600 Rules for the con- struction, installation and operation of lifts and freight el- evators installed for private purposes and uses, obviously regulated lift doors, to which article no. 4 one was dedicated, which established that “all accesses to the lift or freight eleva- tor shaft must be equipped with sturdy doors that can be opened outwards or slid along the wall. For the purposes of these regulations, the closing gates of the shaft are also called doors.” Few additional technical information is contained in art. 4. The height, for example, had to be under 1.90 m (for Cat- egory A and B lifts) and the horizontal distance between landing doors and car doors should be under 10 cm. Finally, in the well access doors, grids or metal perforations with openings under 3 cm in width were allowed, except for different provisions for Category B lifts and for Category C freight lifts whose cabins were not equipped with closing doors; safety glass indicators (called panels) were also intro- duced in Category A and B lifts provided they complied with certain characteristics reported in the decree. A final indication was included for “flexible” doors whose gaps shouldn’t exceed 12 mm in width between the rods constituting the doors themselves. We are clearly addressing doors and gates indiscriminately, the provisions are very simple and rather superficial, cer- tainly far from the safety principles contained in the most recent provisions. However Legislative Decree 600/45 are provisions that determine the fact that doors, or gates, are among the lift components that contribute to overall lift safety. After examining DL 600/45 let’s turn our attention to DPR 1497/63 that is known to be more accurate on technical as- pects. In fact It introduces, right from the definitions, the concept of landing doors and cabin doors, establishing the following: Automatic door - A cabin or landing door that is opened and closed by an auxiliary mechanism. Landing door - A door designed to prevent access to the well when the car is not present. Lock - A mechanical device to prevent, under hazardous conditions, the opening of the landing door, or the loading door, or the cab door. The articles contained in the Presidential Decree 1497/63, which are partly reported below, suggest that since 1945 the doors, as more generally the lift, have undergone a techno- logical evolution that has required amendment, in some cases of significant extent, of the contents of the legislative provisions. The provisions contained in the Presidential De- cree 1497/63 aptly distinguish between landing doors and car doors. With regard to the landing doors we note that the Presidential Decree 1497/63 still allows the possibility of using “... strong frames with nets, grids or perforated metal, having openings that do not allow the passage of a sphere with a diameter of 12 mm. The sections of the net wires must be under 2.5 mm 2 , the sheet metal of the perforations must be at least 1.2 mm thick. Doors may also be made of glass plates...” As for materials, “doors must be made of metal, or have a metal frame, or be of non-deformable plastic material, or of wood with a compound structure at least 40 mm thick.” The principle of stress resistance is introduced. “The door must be able to withstand a constant thrust of 25 kg, nor- mal to the door wall, applied in any position and direction, without presenting permanent deformation. The closed door, stressed with the indicated thrust, shall not exhibit elastic deflection of over 15 mm. The swing door, open and restrained on one free vertex and stressed with a constant thrust of 25 kg on the other free vertex, shall not exhibit elastic deflection greater than 25 mm.” The indications provided for the cabin doors were essential- ly intended to designate the mandatory presence of doors while mentioning the possible exceptions to their installa- tion: “In Category A and B lifts, cabin access must be pro- vided with strong doors, extended for the entire opening of the access, inward opening, or sliding, except as indicated in the following paragraphs...” Presidential Decree 1497/63, at point 29.5 stated the pos- sibility of not installing the doors in the cabin in Category B lifts with an operating speed not exceeding 0.5 m/s, in- troducing however particular integrative safety conditions. As for Ministerial Decree 587/87, implementation of Direc- tives 84/529/EEC and 86/312/EEC relating to electric eleva- 1