Working with Door and Hardware Suppliers

Components, not catalogue items

A door manufacturer or hardware supplier cannot treat a lock the way a facility does. The facility adapts the site to the lock; you cannot adapt the door to it, because the door is already drawn, jigged and in production.

That moves the conversation from which lock do you recommend to does this lock match this preparation, and the answer has to be yes before the order is placed.

The fit dimensions that actually matter

For a cylinder lock, three dimensions decide whether it drops into your door:

• Bore diameter — the size of the cut-out in the door
• Cylinder length and cam position — how far it sits through the door and where the cam engages the lock case
• Fixing centres — the spacing of the mounting holes, where a cover plate is used

For latches and hasps, the equivalent list is mounting-hole spacing, bolt throw and the strike arrangement. Send the drawing you already have; we will tell you what matches and what does not, rather than approximating.

Keying belongs in the factory, not on site

Keying is the component decision most often left too late. Once the doors leave your production line, rekeying means pulling cylinders back out.

Keyed-alike, keyed-different and master-key structures are all set at production. If your customers are facilities, ask them for the key structure before you place the order, not after the doors are installed.

Bulk packing for a production line

A production line rarely wants retail packaging. What it usually wants is:

• Bulk cartons with a consistent count per carton
• No individual packaging, unless the lock ships to an end customer separately
• Carton marking that matches your goods-in process, not a marketing design

Retail-ready packaging can be added later, for the portion of the order that goes to distribution rather than to the line.

Documentation your customers will ask for

Door suppliers are usually one step removed from the compliance question, but the question still arrives: a facility's specifier will ask what the hardware is made of, and whether documents exist for it.

The practical position is to state what is true — material grade, finish, and the fact that test or compliance documents are available on request and tied to a specific product — rather than implying an approval that has not been granted.

What we typically see

• A near-match in size that fails on the fixing centres, discovered after the jig is already made.
• A keying requirement that reaches the supplier after the cylinders are produced.
• Retail packaging specified for the whole order, when only part of it needed it.
• A request for a compliance document that no supplier in the chain can actually issue, because it belongs to a different party.

Sending the door drawing and the key structure at the enquiry stage removes the first two entirely.