Power door operating device

Abstract

A power operating device for use with vertically sliding garage doors provides a friction drive roller that can slide laterally to take into account variations in space between the side of the upper panel of the door and the guide tracks when the door is open or closed. The operating device includes a housing with a reversable motor and gear reduction driving a drive shaft, a drive roller formed of resilient material connected to the drive shaft and having a contoured surface to ride on an outside surface of one guide track, pinch means to pinch the one guide track between one of the guide rollers of the door and the drive roller such that rotation of the drive roller frictionally drives the sliding door in the guide tracks, and attachment means on the housing for connection to the sliding door, the improvement comprising slidable connection between the drive roller and the drive shaft to take into account lateral displacement of the sliding door between open and closed position, and slidable adjustable base for the attachment means for different thicknesses of sliding door and the guide tracks.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.