Why Red Paint for Safety? - DDM Garage Doors Blog

Over the years, manufacturers have sought to build more safety into their products. In addition to warning labels, garage door manufacturers often powder coat products with red paint for safety and to alert technicians of potential danger.

Dangerous Winding Cones

Probably the most dangerous component is the winding cone on a garage door torsion spring. These have injured many people because they did not have the correct information to do the work. Painting the heads of the set screws red has helped prevent many injuries.

All the new cable drums come with the standardized red set screws. Loosening setscrews on a cable drum can be extremely dangerous.

Manufacturers are also powder coating their spring anchor brackets red. I helped fix a door for a man who loosened these brackets because the wood attached to it was splitting. The bracket spun around numerous times, breaking his arm in 14 places, and he almost died. He was in the hospital for a month. Here is Raynor’s new residential bracket.

Raynor’s earlier commercial and industrial brackets were galvanized and silver colored, as you see in this older bracket.

They now make the new Raynor Spring Anchor Brackets with red paint for safety. They are also longer on the bottom to provide for more torque on the springs.

Spring Tension Transfer

Spring tension transfers from the winding cone to the shaft. Then, it transfers to the cable drum on each side, and down to the bottom of the door. This is where the cable attaches to the bottom fixture, as you can see on this CHI garage door.

Because of the tension on the bottom fixture, removing the fixture without first removing the tension is extremely dangerous. One of my customers removed one of these, and I think the doctor sewed up his head with about fifteen stitches.

Garage door work is dangerous, and we are thankful to all who are doing their part to make it safer. Red paint for safety on the dangerous parts of garage doors will hopefully minimize similar accidents in the future. We also recommend that you view the dangers and warnings described in our YouTube video on “How to Replace Garage Door Torsion Springs.”

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