We’ve been working away on the new shotgun gate system for the Orlando Park and making great progress as you can see from the images below. We covered it in the blog about the bespoke gate system earlier when we were cutting and shaping metal. It’s only now when you see it all laid out and built up that you see the scale of the build.

The gates are now back from their powder coating and look amazing in their sunshine yellow finish. All of the rest of the metalwork is finished in less vibrant colours, but sprayed up ready to go too.

From this angle it’s hard to see the scale of the gating system

With any project of this type, we fully build up the system to an operational standard which allows the team to test the electric and pneumatic systems to an agreed standard. With this project, it’s designed and built to an even higher standard than normal and we are even working to an exact opening and closing force for both ride entry and exit gates. We’re used to this and it’s why we have the magical Sauter Digital Force Gauge in the toolbox. It’s not the most common piece of kit but it does allow us to test opening and closing forces and adjust them on every individual gate until they are all equal across the board and exactly as agreed.

The full set of gates is assembled on site ready for testing

The team assemble a gate on the workbench

The bushes are hand reamed to ensure a perfect fit for the hinge pin

And then assembled onto the floor plate for testing