End of Life/Obsolete Elevator Equipment – Dover DMC Elevator

This is the 5^th in our series of end of life/obsolete elevator control systems.  Everyone has a ton of these everywhere in the United States!  The Dover DMC was installed in 1985-2001[2] +/-.  In the Chicago market this is a huge part of every elevator company’s portfolio.   We waited to run this blog because I had not seen a Thyssen sales person tell a customer it was obsolete.  That changed a few weeks ago when a potential customer shared their email with me from a TKE employee indicating the DMC platform is considered obsolete.  While we knew that some of the circuit boards had been considered obsolete, the TKE email was a good reason/reminder to add this to our “end of life” series.

What’s the story?  Dover Elevator installed elevators from 1955 to 1999 and was the 3^rd largest elevator company prior to selling to Thyssen Krupp[now known as TKE].  After Thyssen Krupp bought Dover, they branded the TK name on it prior to moving to a totally different platform called the TAC 20.  The Dover DMC was a wonderful, very reliable software based elevator control system. While the Dover DMC had some drawbacks, it has been a very reliable work horse for many buildings. Recently Thyssen or TKE decided to discontinue support for the Dover DMC and will no longer manufacture solid state boards.

Who this impacts – If you have a Dover DMC control system you should begin putting money away for a control modernization.  There are still parts available, we have parts, but when they are gone, they are gone. 

Are parts still available? – Yes and no.  There are 3^rd party manufacturers that stock some of the boards.  There are a few elevator solid state board repair shops that will repair the boards.  The warning with any board repair is that while the intention is to be successful, sometimes board repairs are not successful or take a few tries.  If you don’t want these challenges, replace the elevator controller prior to going down this painful road. 

Take away – If you have one of these controllers in your building get a plan together with your elevator contractor.  See if they have replacement parts and how many.  If your CLC board, selector board, door board or any other board goes out, do they have a replacement?  How many?  When it rains it pours, be aware that there are a lot of these out there and if a few have issues at the same time and require spare parts, you are pulling from the same spare part pool which is finite.  

If you have any questions or would like additional information feel free to contact me at CraigZ@colleyelevator.com or 630-766-7230 ext. 107. 

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