MC-125 brochure: automatic sliding door operator

The MC-125 is the sliding door operator MC Automations supplies, installs and services across South Africa. It is imported and assembled locally at our Laser Park premises, which is why spares sit on a shelf in Johannesburg rather than on a container. This MC-125 brochure carries the specification exactly as it appears in the operator documentation we hold. Where a figure is not listed, it is because we do not hold it in writing — ask, and we will confirm it in writing before you specify it.

How to use this MC-125 brochure

The specification block below is the part most people need. If you are sizing an opening, read the clear-opening and leaf-width rows together — they constrain each other. If you are writing a tender, the MC-125 brochure specification can be quoted directly, because every figure in it comes from the operator documentation rather than from marketing copy. If you are comparing quotes, the rows worth checking against a competing offer are leaf weight, clear opening, manual opening force and warranty.

Use the print button at the top of this MC-125 brochure to produce a clean PDF. The print layout strips the navigation, buttons and pop-ups, so what comes out is the specification and the diagrams on their own.

What the MC-125 is built to do

A sliding door operator has one job: move a glass leaf out of somebody’s way before they break stride, then close it again without letting the building’s conditioned air out. The MC-125 does that with a brushless DC motor and a belt drive on a surface-mounted header. It drives a single sliding leaf up to 150 kg, or a bi-parting pair at 120 kg each.

Speeds are adjustable rather than fixed, which matters more than the headline numbers. A pharmacy entrance and a shopping-centre mall link need very different opening speeds, and one operator covers both because opening runs 150–460 mm/s and closing 130–460 mm/s. Hold-open time adjusts from 0 to 8 seconds, so a trolley-heavy retail entrance gets the time it actually needs.

Four things to settle before you order

• The header. The operator is surface mounted and needs a solid, level header. A header out of level, or one that flexes, shows up as a door that binds at one end of its travel.
• The clear opening, measured. Not the nominal opening from the drawing — the opening as built, at the point the leaves will run.
• Traffic. Cycle count drives the service interval far more than age does. An entrance running several thousand cycles a day needs a different interval to an office side door.
• Temperature and exposure. The operator is rated −20 °C to +50 °C. A west-facing glazed lobby and a cold-store lobby sit at opposite ends of that band.

Automatic entrances in South African buildings are designed against the SANS 10400 series that supports the National Building Regulations; copies are published by the South African Bureau of Standards. We will tell you which requirements apply to your opening, and we do not publish a certification claim we cannot evidence.

Where the MC-125 is specified

The MC-125 is used on retail and shopping-centre entrances, healthcare corridors and reception areas, hotel and hospitality entrances, office receptions, industrial and logistics doorways, and public buildings. One operator covers all of them because speed, hold-open time and opening size adjust to the entrance rather than the other way round.

Service, spares and warranty

The MC-125 carries a two-year warranty. Because the operator is imported and assembled locally, spares are held in Johannesburg and a technician arrives with the part that fits the fault rather than a diagnosis and a second visit. Maintenance intervals are set against the cycles an entrance actually carries rather than a generic calendar, and we service and repair automatic doors from other manufacturers alongside our own.

Installation and site readiness

Most of what determines whether an automatic sliding door reads well over its life is decided before the operator arrives on site. The MC-125 is surface mounted, which means it is fixed to the face of a header and the header carries the weight. That header has to be solid, level along its full length, and fixed to something structural. A header packed off a light steel stud line will flex a few millimetres under a 150 kg leaf, and a few millimetres is enough to make a door bind at one end of its travel and run cleanly at the other.

Level matters more than people expect. A sliding leaf hangs from carriages that run along a track; if the track falls even slightly, gravity assists the door in one direction and fights it in the other. The operator will compensate for a while, because it is driving a motor against a load, but the wear it is compensating with lands on the belt and the rollers. A door that needs its belt tensioned twice in a year is usually telling you about the header rather than about the operator.

The other site item is power. The MC-125 needs a dedicated supply within the AC 110–220 V ±10% band, terminated where the operator will sit rather than run in later along the header. Where an entrance also has access control, an intercom or a fire interface, those cables should be pulled at the same time; retrofitting them afterwards usually means opening a header that has already been closed up and finished.

MC-125 or MCW-100: which operator suits the opening

The MC-125 is a sliding door operator. Where the door has to swing rather than slide — a hinged leaf on a reception, a ward door, a door into a plant room — the operator in this range is the MCW-100 instead. The two are not interchangeable, and the decision is made by the door, not by preference.

Sliding suits an opening with wall space beside it and steady two-way traffic. Swinging suits an opening where there is no room for a leaf to stack, or where the door must hold a fire or acoustic rating that a sliding leaf cannot. If the opening is wide and traffic is heavy, sliding is almost always the better answer, because a swinging leaf sweeps an arc that people have to keep clear. Full figures for the swing operator sit on the MCW-100 product page, and both operators are imported and assembled locally on the same basis.

What this MC-125 brochure does not claim

It is worth being explicit about the limits of this document, because entrance specifications are an area where confident-sounding numbers get repeated until they are treated as fact.

• The one million cycle figure is a service-life test result. It is not a guarantee of a million trouble-free operations, not a maintenance-free period, and not a warranty term. The warranty is two years.
• No certification or third-party approval is claimed anywhere in this MC-125 brochure. Where a project requires evidence against a specific standard, ask us and we will tell you what documentation exists rather than assert compliance.
• Figures absent from the specification table are absent because we do not hold them in writing. Sound levels, ingress-protection ratings and duty classifications are the ones most often requested; if you need one for a specification, ask and we will confirm it in writing or tell you plainly that we cannot.
• Performance figures describe the operator as supplied and correctly installed. An operator on a flexing header, an under-voltage supply or misaligned sensors will not hold them, and no brochure figure survives a bad installation.

MC-125 brochure: maintenance and service intervals

Wear on a sliding door operator tracks cycles, not the calendar. A shopping-centre entrance can complete several thousand operating cycles a day, while an office side door may manage a few dozen. Two doors installed on the same date can therefore be years apart in real wear, which is why a fixed annual visit suits one and badly under-serves the other.

On a service visit the items that matter are the carriage rollers, the drive belt tension, the track, the activation and safety sensors, and the fixings holding the header to the structure. Sensors drift out of alignment more often than mechanical parts fail, and a door that has started closing too quickly on people is almost always a sensor or a setting rather than a worn operator. Because opening speed, closing speed and hold-open time are all adjustable, most complaints of that kind are corrected on site.

If an entrance is on a maintenance agreement we set the interval against measured traffic. The figures in this MC-125 brochure describe the operator as supplied; how long it holds those figures depends almost entirely on how often it runs and how well the header was built.

MC-125 brochure: terms used above

• Clear opening — the measured gap available to walk through when the leaves are fully open. Not the structural opening.
• Leaf — the moving panel itself. A single slide has one; a bi-parting pair has two that meet in the middle.
• Hold-open time — how long the door stays open after activation clears, adjustable here from 0 to 8 seconds.
• Manual opening force — the push needed to open the door by hand with no power. The MC-125 brochure figures are under 40 N single slide and under 50 N bi-parting.
• Service-life test — a test-condition result, quoted here as 1 000 000 cycles. It is not a maintenance interval and not a warranty period.
• Surface mounted — the operator fixes onto the face of the header rather than being concealed within it, which is why header condition matters so much.

MC-125 brochure: frequently asked

The MC-125 brochure at a glance

Questions we are asked about the MC-125 brochure