I know there are some that simply use gates, but most elevators I’ve seen have these inches-thick metal doors. Why so thick and serious? Are they actually hollow inside? It seems like I’m walking into a safe every time the doors close.
The best I can think of is that they provide additional structural support for the elevator car, which isn’t even a really good guess.
What appears to be an inches thick door is actually two doors. The outer door stays in place (of course), while the inner door moves with the elevator. And the actual door panels are made of metal no more than an 1/8th of an inch thick, but there is a few inches of space between the doors which houses the door closing mechanisms, a photocell detector that keeps the door from closing on you and a few other necessary odds and ends.
ETA: They appear to be a single door because they operate together, and there is a considerable amount of metal in the outer door (the one that stays behind when the elevator moves), but that door is required to have a fire rating to prevent fire from travelling through a building by the elevator shaft.
There are actually two doors: one for the elevator car, and another for the … outside… lobby… part where you wait for the elevator to come. Each door seems to be pretty similar to any other metal door, and must be hollow (or they would weigh a ridiculous amount). There’s also an inch or so of clearance between the doors.
Based on the elevators that I’ve seen, I actually think that you are mistaken. They may look thick, but they’re mostly just a metal shell.
Oh yeah, I know there are two doors. I didn’t think about the doors housing mechanisms and needing to be fireproof though. Excellent, makes perfect sense now! Thank you.
When I was a kid I lived in a high-rise where the elevators were built without the inside doors. As we rode up and down we used to hold permanent markers to the plane of motion as it flashed by (door, concrete, door, concrete, door, etc…) and lay down thick, 150-foot lines.
We were crazy like that.
Elevators like that still exist in Europe. I’ve seen them in Prague and Stockholm. In the Stockholm example the lobby door didn’t slide, it opened on hinges like a regular door. There was of course some sort of locking mechanism to keep you from opening a door into an empty shaft.
The elevator in my 3 story house is like that. The elevator shaft is very small, so having double doors would consume quite a lot of internal space. Besides, the elevator is rather slow, so there is no big danger. And there are safety switches at the edges of the car, so if your foot gets stuck, the elevator will stop immediately.
The inner doors are thick because they are hollow, in order to contain the object-sensor (the rubber bumpers that prevent people from being trapped in closing doors) and other mechanisms.