Sliding
Automatic sliding doors for buildings that never stop
Single or bi-parting automatic sliding doors driven by our MC-125 operator, with clear openings from 1450 mm to 5000 mm and leaves up to 150 kg. Tested to one million cycles, assembled in Johannesburg, installed and serviced nationwide.
Where they fit
The default choice for a busy entrance
Automatic sliding doors suit any entrance where people arrive with their hands full, in a steady stream, or in both directions at once.
Retail and shopping centres, hospitals and clinics, hotels, office receptions and food outlets all end up on sliding doors for the same reasons: nothing swings into the path of someone walking through, the opening clears quickly, and the door takes a very high cycle count without complaint.
They are also the easiest of the four door types to make accessible. There is no leaf to pull against, which matters for a wheelchair user, somebody with a trolley, or a parent with a pushchair.
Configurations
Single, bi-parting or telescopic
Single sliding runs one leaf to one side. It is the simplest and cheapest arrangement, and it needs as much wall to park in as the leaf is wide.
Bi-parting splits the opening and runs a leaf each way. Each leaf only travels half the distance, so the door clears faster — which is why most centre entrances use it.
Telescopic nests two leaves a side, fitting a wide clear opening into a short track. The MC-125 is available in a telescopic configuration where the facade will not give a standard leaf room to park. There is a fuller explanation on our telescopic sliding doors page.
The operator
MC-125 specification
Every set of automatic sliding doors we supply runs on the MC-125, which we import and assemble at our Laser Park facility in Johannesburg.
Clear opening from 1450 mm to 5000 mm.
Leaf weight up to 150 kg.
Tested to one million cycles.
24-month warranty on the operator.
Telescopic configuration available.
Assembling locally is what puts belts, rollers, floor guides, sensors and controllers on a shelf in Johannesburg rather than six weeks away on a container, and it is the reason a worn part is usually a same-week repair. Full detail is on the MC-125 operator page.
Sensors and safety
What actually keeps the door safe
An automatic sliding door is only as safe as its sensors. Activation sensors open it as somebody approaches; safety sensors hold it open while anyone is still in the opening.
Both drift over time. They get knocked by trolleys, dust over, and lose coverage as the way people use an entrance changes. That is why we test sensor coverage at every service visit as routine work rather than only after a complaint, and why we set coverage on site at commissioning instead of accepting the factory defaults.
Speeds, hold-open time and cushioning are set the same way — against the traffic the entrance actually carries.
Afterwards
Keeping them running
Wear on automatic sliding doors tracks cycles rather than the calendar. A centre entrance running several thousand operations a day and a back-office door on identical hardware need completely different service intervals.
In high-traffic areas we recommend a service visit every three months. Belts stretch, rollers flatten, floor guides fill with grit and sensors drift — all cheap to correct on a planned visit, expensive when an entrance fails on a Saturday morning. A well-maintained door should give around 20 years of service. We service automatic sliding doors from other manufacturers alongside our own. Requirements for powered pedestrian doors in South Africa are published through SABS.
Before you specify
What decides the specification
Four things move the price and the configuration of automatic sliding doors more than anything else on the drawing.
The clear opening. Not the existing frame — the gap people actually walk through when the door is fully open. Everything else follows from it.
Headroom above the opening. The operator needs room, and the structure above has to carry it plus the leaves. A photograph of the head tells us more than a measurement.
Leaf build and glazing. Frameless, framed or thermally broken, and what glass thickness the leaf carries — both feed straight into the 150 kg per leaf limit.
Power and interfaces. Power at the head of the door, plus any access control, locking, fire alarm or building-management interface the entrance has to work with.
Where the wall space either side is tight, that is normally the point at which a telescopic configuration becomes the answer instead of a wider single leaf.
Common questions
Automatic sliding doors, answered
How wide can the opening be?
From 1450 mm to 5000 mm of clear opening on the MC-125, with leaves up to 150 kg. Bi-parting clears a wider opening in the same travel because each leaf only moves half the distance.
Are electric sliding doors the same thing?
Yes. Electric sliding doors, automatic sliding doors and powered sliding door systems all describe the same thing — a sliding leaf driven by an overhead operator and triggered by a sensor.
Can you replace an existing operator?
Usually, without touching the glass. Where the frames and leaves are sound, swapping the drive is far cheaper than replacing the entrance.
What happens in a power failure?
That depends on the locking and the building’s escape strategy, which we confirm on survey. Battery backup can be fitted where the entrance has to keep operating or fail safe open.
Send us the opening
Clear opening width and height, a photograph of what sits above it, and whether there is power at the head. We will come back with a configuration and a price for the automatic sliding doors that suit the entrance.