Full-Height Security Turnstile Product

Overview

A full-height turnstile is the unattended answer to a guarded gate: a floor-to-ceiling rotating barrier that admits exactly one person per valid credential and cannot be jumped, crawled under, or held open. The Rotor Assembly — a centre shaft carrying three or four wings of horizontal Rotor Arm tubes — turns inside a curved Guide Channel whose vertical tubes interleave with the arm ends. The only path through is the moving sector between two wings, a pocket about 550–650 mm wide that holds one person.

The format dates to the 1920s "iron maiden" stadium gates and has changed little mechanically because the geometry already solves the problem; what has changed is the head. Modern units carry a 24 V electromechanical Head Locking Mechanism that releases per credential, counts rotations, enforces direction, and reports to the site access-control system. Typical applications are factory and construction-site gates, stadiums, transit depots, data centres, and prison visitor routes — anywhere entry must be controlled without a person watching it.

How it works

All the intelligence sits in the head mechanism above the rotor. A star-shaped Indexing Cam, keyed to the Rotor Shaft, has one lobe per sector — three for a 120° rotor, four for 90°. Two hardened Locking Pawl dogs ride the cam, one blocking each direction of rotation, so entry and exit can be controlled independently: free exit with controlled entry is the most common configuration.

When the Credential Reader passes a valid credential to the Turnstile Controller, the controller energizes one Release Solenoid, lifting the corresponding pawl. The user pushes the arms; the rotor turns one sector while a hydraulic Hydraulic Damper caps its speed so a shoved rotor cannot whip into the next person. As the lobe passes, a Position Switch confirms the rotation, the controller drops the pawl, and the spring-loaded Self-Centering Cam cam pulls the rotor into the next home position so the passage is never left half-open. If nobody pushes within a configurable timeout, typically 5–8 seconds, the pawl relocks and the credential is consumed or returned depending on the anti-passback policy.

Solenoid behaviour on power loss is a specification decision, not an afterthought. Fail-safe heads spin free when power drops, which fire codes demand on escape routes; fail-secure heads stay locked, which perimeter-security sites demand. Many installations split the difference: fail-safe in the exit direction, fail-secure on entry, with a Battery Backup bridging short outages and a fire-alarm input on the I/O Interface Module forcing release regardless.

Structure and security envelope

The Cage Frame is what makes the barrier full-height in practice. Four Support Post columns carry the Roof Frame, which holds the head mechanism rigidly over the rotor axis, and the guide channel's Channel Infill Tube verticals close every gap beside the rotor to under about 60 mm. Standards such as LPS 1175 grade the resulting attack resistance; heavier ratings add anti-climb roofs and closer tube spacing. Outdoor units are hot-dip galvanized and powder-coated or built in 304/316 stainless, with the mechanism under an IP54 Mechanism Cover.

Everything lands on the slab through the Base Fixing Set: four Base Plate feet on sixteen Concrete Anchor fixings, levelled with the Leveling Shim Pack. Plumb matters more than it looks — a rotor axis a few millimetres out of vertical loads the Bottom Pivot Seat unevenly, drags on the Ball Bearing races, and chews the pawl faces within a season.

Throughput and integration

A single rotor passes 15–20 people per minute in one direction, which is why stadium gates use banks of tandem units sharing posts. The controller exposes passage counts and alarm states (forced rotation, tailgate attempt detected by an interrupted rotation, door-held analogue) to the access platform over the same Wiegand or OSDP link as the readers. Status Pictogram Light pictograms and the Indication Sounder give the user immediate grant/deny feedback, and an optional LCD Panel shows messages such as credential-expired prompts.

Maintenance is light: grease the cam and pawl faces and check damper oil annually, verify solenoid fail-mode behaviour at every fire-system test, and expect a mean cycles between failures of two million or more — a busy factory gate's decade of service.