I was surprised to learn that every fifth elevator installed in Russia is produced in Moscow.
The Karacharovsky Mechanical Plant (KMZ) was established in 1948 in the village of Karacharovo, and now it is Ryazansky Prospect. Since 1957, the plant has produced 260 thousand elevators.
Now in Moscow, under the overhaul program, all elevators older than 25 are being replaced. Since 2011, 34,000 have already replaced them, and this 2020, another 2,800 elevators in 770 houses will be replaced. When replacing, they install elevators with a cab of this type.
The plant is impressive in size. There are more than 450 machines in five workshops.
They make cabins, electronics, wheels and many other parts of elevators. Wheels are delivered to the plant in the form of cast iron blanks.
They look very different after turning.
The winches and motors are Italian. Russian, alas, are not only worse, but also more expensive.
But the control cabinet is not only manufactured at KMZ, but also developed here.
All elevators are equipped with frequency controllers (large black boxes in the photo), thanks to which the elevator starts and stops smoothly.
Checking the operation of the finished cabinet.
Another important thing that affects the safety of the elevator is the emergency braking system. All parts of it are done here. This is what "brake pads" look like.
Every brake spring is tested.
Assembly of the upper part of the cab.
There are many metal parts in the elevator, so metalworking takes up a significant part of production.
The metal is rolled out from huge rolls.
Workpieces of the required length are cut, holes are punched in them.
The edges of the sheet are bent.
The structure is spot welded.
And colored.
Assembling another safety element - mine protection buttons (if someone tries to open the doors when there is no elevator in front of him, an alarm will go off).
Assembling the door opening mechanism.
Door test stand.
It turns out that in modern elevators to automatically close doors, a weight is used that moves inside the leaf of one door.
Plasma cutting of metal.
Cutting out details.
Heat treatment.
The plant has both modern and old Soviet machines, but most of all I was struck by the CNC machine, which is over 40 years old, and it works, surprising everyone with such a display and control panel.
The plant has its own design bureau, which develops both the elevators themselves and the electronics and software for them (by the way, they said they were looking for good designers).
I made a short video about the plant. There you can look at all the processes that I described, and also see the elevator becoming transparent when the button is pressed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch? v = UX6vJoTzFS4
Two elevators made at the Karacharovsky mechanical plant have been operating in my entrance for 15 years, and during this time they have never broken. It is quite possible that in the next few years the plant will have to move somewhere in the Moscow region, but so far it is one of the largest machine-building plants operating within the city.
© 2020, Alexey Nadezhin
The main topic of my blog is technology in human life. I write reviews, share experiences, talk about all sorts of interesting things. My second project - lamptest.ru. I test LED bulbs and help me figure out which ones are good and which are not.