About BD Loops
Ted Dickson the current owner of the business started BD Loops. Ted worked in electronics for over 40 years and in the US Army he served as the head service engineer of American Forces Korea Network (AFKN) television station for AFRTS. After his service for his country he moved on to Sony for 23 years as a broadcast engineer and JumboTron Regional Manager. After he exhausted his opportunities at Sony, he then went to work for a friend in the wrought iron industry to head up the company’s access division. After several months, Ted began to notice that over 50% of repeat service calls on brand new gate systems were because of faulty inductance loops. With his engineering background, Ted took apart a loop and noticed many flaws in the design and began to make a design to improve reliability to eliminate repeat service calls.
Avoiding a conflict of interest he gave the design to his son Brian who began BD loops. Brian sold the loops to Ted's company and they were rather successful. Unfortunately Ted's employer ran into cash flow problems and had to close several divisions including the access division. Being that the case, Ted started to approach gate distributors nationally.
That was 7 years ago, since then the company has grown and is apart of every major distributor in the gate industry with over 85,000 loops sold with only one loop failure, this quality is unheard of in the industry. BD loops is also apart of AFA (American Fence Association) and IDA (International Door Association) showing great interest and support for the industry. We also support the field training school that is put on by AFA.
About the BD Loop
Inductance Loops - How do they work?
When Direct current passes through a wire an Electric Magnetic Field or Flux (EMF) is created around the wire. A good example is when a wire is coiled around a metal rod then energized with a battery; current flows through the wire and causes the rod to act like a magnet. The more turns in the coil or increases in current flow the greater the magnetic field or pull.
If the current is removed, the magnet field collapses back into the wire. In the case of Alternating Current such as AC, the current changes direction and sets up a magnetic field opposite of the same when the current was passing in the opposite direction. In an AC circuit, the field that is collapsing is pushing against the new developing field. This pushing back is a form of resistance known as Inductance. Anytime you have AC passing through a wire you will have this special resistance of Inductance. All detection loops will have AC current applied to them. That is why detection loops are referred to as Inductance loops. This inductance is measured in units of Henrys. A common range of inductance for a detection loop is 40 to 300 micro Henrys.
When a detector energizes a loop with an AC current. The size of the loop, number of winding in the loop, length of lead-in wire and wire size will determine the total resistance or inductance of the loop circuit. The detector will determine how much current is flowing through the loop and set that amount as the standard. When a metal object enters the EMF field created by the loop current, the metal object absorbs some of the clasping EMF fields. Because some of the clasping EMF field is now absorbed, it lowers the resistance in the loop circuit. This causes an increase in current flow through the wire that is detected by the detector. When this happens, the detector will either open or close a relay switch that activates a command in the gate operator such as open for exit, reverse for safety, or hold open or close for a swing gate with a center or shadow function.