Elevator and Escalator Installers and Repairers

Elevator and Escalator Installers and Repairers typically perform the following tasks: • Inspect wiring connections, control panel hookups, door installations, and alignments and clearances of cars and hoistways to ensure that equipment will operate properly. • Assemble, install, repair, and maintain elevators, escalators, moving sidewalks, and dumbwaiters, using hand and power tools, and testing devices such as test lamps, ammeters, and voltmeters. • Disassemble defective units, and repair or replace parts such as locks, gears, cables, and electric wiring. • Check that safety regulations and building codes are met, and complete service reports verifying conformance to standards. • Locate malfunctions in brakes, motors, switches, and signal and control systems, using test equipment. • Adjust safety controls, counterweights, door mechanisms, and components such as valves, ratchets, seals, and brake linings. • Read and interpret blueprints to determine the layout of system components, frameworks, and foundations, and to select installation equipment. • Connect car frames to counterweights, using steel cables. • Maintain log books that detail all repairs and checks performed. • Connect electrical wiring to control panels and electric motors. • Test newly installed equipment to ensure that it meets specifications, such as stopping at floors for set amounts of time. • Participate in additional training to keep skills up to date. • Operate elevators to determine power demands, and test power consumption to detect overload factors. • Install electrical wires and controls by attaching conduit along shaft walls from floor to floor and pulling plastic-covered wires through the conduit. • Attach guide shoes and rollers to minimize the lateral motion of cars as they travel through shafts. • Install outer doors and door frames at elevator entrances on each floor of a structure. • Assemble elevator cars, installing each car's platform, walls, and doors. • Bolt or weld steel rails to the walls of shafts to guide elevators, working from scaffolding or platforms. • Assemble electrically powered stairs, steel frameworks, and tracks, and install associated motors and electrical wiring. • Cut prefabricated sections of framework, rails, and other components to specified dimensions.