AGL® is the measure of all things on doors and, for decades now, has been a byword for unsurpassed heavy-duty hardware.

Not only has it become a benchmark amongst architects, it has also been thrilling fabricators, clients, operators and investors for nigh on 30 years with its well-conceived engineering and durable functioning. It was in 2007 that FSB began re-evaluating hardware requirements for “public projects” and completely rethinking its longstanding AGL® hardware. The developers in the FSB team were intent on preserving the compensating bearing’s technical core whilst adding easygrasp benefits for all parties to the public project business. In the end, then, the orderer’s specifications for the secondgeneration AGL® bearing cited no fewer than ten criteria to be met, some of which are set out here:

• cost-effectiveness embracing more than just sustainability
• great ease of assembly
• enhance safety of assembly process whilst cutting down likelihood of errors
• simplify and reduce number of individual components
• make good function-related aesthetic drawbacks
• with regard to ranges: take account of heavy lever handles in stainless steel or bronze whilst also ensuring functional longevity in conjunction with doors and locks
• AGL® fire safety (FS) variant

There was nevertheless no question of diluting the tenets or performance parameters underpinning the AGL® philosophy, to wit:

• compensating bearing with low-friction, no-maintenance Teflon-coated bushing for lever handle on rose/backplate
• compensating bearing to offset any play arising from boreholes, locks/lock mortises and Stabil spindles
• superiority of user category Class 4/EN 1906 with more than a million tested operations
• positive locking of male and females parts for optimised absorption by the door leaf of forces exerted.