ImagineerTom

Why? Multi track recording has been accessible and easy for decades; find out what precisely he is trying to achieve as it can't surely be just to record "stereo"

Normal, non surfaced ply all the way. You can’t really paint it, if it gets damaged it’s unrepairable and every screw or staple that goes into it adds another point of failure. Regular ply painted black is cheaper, easily repairable, durable, adaptable / flexible in actual use and will match any other decking you sub in. as for painting - with a roller (on a stick) it’s reasonably quick; because of the quantities you’re going to do invest in a £30 spray gun from Toolstation and spray paint them: 4-5 thin layers (each one at 45degrees to the last) will give you a fast, even coat in surprisingly little time.

pushing back a bit here - the OP does ask for something that does it "automatically" suggesting there isn't currently backstage staff with the time / skills to do this manually, the OP also works in contemporary dance which is almost universally under-funded and under staffed from a tech crew point of view; these are the markers that normally indicate to me that this automation is to save money / reduce staffing when in reality its not going to. The op is also very clear about this starting at almost ground level and raising up to 3m which puts all the pantographs / chains / home made systems mentioned right into prime "something gets caught" height range so if implemented would require multiple safety interlocks and stage crew to monitor when in motion; more complications and costs. Also dancers in dance companies do have an incredible ability to put themselves in harms way backstage. to the OP - the closest to off-the-shelf you will find is going to be something from wahlberg but please do also consider your design and implementation very carefully - something which can lift 30kg of moving light 3m up and down will punch holes in sets, tear curtains and slice bits off humans within seconds if anything goes wrong so you do have to ensure you are taking proper precautions and have considered every worst case scenario.

Just to be the grinch here... what you're making is ultimately a piece of automation so in-show-use it will need lots of safety switches / crash sensors on it, some heavy-duty safety assessment paperwork and probably a dedicated member of backstage team responsible for checking it and operating (or overseeing its "automatic" operation) in the show. This is something that will require $00000's of equipment (that admittedly you may be able to rent rather than buy) and a weekly operating/staffing cost of at least $1000 so before you get your heart too set on this its worth stopping to make sure the show has a budget that can absorb those sorts of costs?

Just a general note based on experiences helping others - just because you /could/ 3D print a perfect model, doesn't mean you can. One example that jumps to mind was someone who wanted to print a model of a grand piano for a model box. He found a stl file, scaled it and couldn't get it to print, he used CAD to make his own model, scaled it and couldn't get it to print - in both cases I had to point out that the spindly legs of the piano were so thin that when scaled to modelbox size they were barely 1mm thick; virtually impossible to print. In the case of the steeldeck pieces linked above they would appear to have been designed with 3D printing in mind but if you add legs to them make sure you 3D print an actual solid leg, not a scaled scaffold tube as the latter would again have walls so thin the model would either fail to print or crumble at the slightest touch. Sometimes with modelboxes getting a shape that fills the correct volumetric space is more important than producing a photo-real, perfectly accurate 3D part.

The mister / fan / LED’s system I describe will give you exactly what you need - the “flames” will be effectively invisible until you turn the LED’s on and or you can ramp the fan power up (turn on a second fan for a few seconds) will make the visible flames suddenly get visibly much taller for a few seconds.

Vape coils work by (essentially) shorting the battery through the coil to produce a lot of heat very quickly. It’s fine for a couple of seconds cycled at most once or twice per minute intermittently but any more than that causes catastrophic failure of the battery and or the melting of the coil. I’ve got a LOT of experience in this field - if you’ve seen a vape based smoke system in a prop in theatre in the last 5 years there’s something like a 1:3 chance its one of mine….

Vape based smoke tech is great for short bursts or relatively dense smoke in a small volume. It’s not viable (or safe because of the currents involved) for longer bursts or large volume. we’ve put loads of mist maker based systems into attractions and events that need the sort of effect the OP describes because it is the safest, easiest, most dependable solution.

Ultrasonic mist maker / pond fogger under water in a “sealed” box the size of the “fire” you want with holes drilled in a line in the lid. a small (really small, we’re talking 5v 30/10 fan kinda size) blowing air into the box which picks up some of the mister generated fog and blow it out through the holes in the lid. This will produce the smoke you need which you can then up light / backlight with orange, red & yellow LED’s and is how we do it in theme park scenarios. Depending on the size of your fire you might need multiple misters but domestic grade ones can be bought for a few quid on eBay.

Loving it - thankyou for sharing!

Worth noting how the factories in this later video have posters and signs up, have jigs, moulds, custom trays, custom tooling, actual manufacturing devices in the room. Proper building rigs, proper testing rigs, visible “production line” setup - it’s clear that these companies have their own production line (or at the very least rent specialist, experienced manufacturing teams / facilities for this sector) rather than the generic rent-a-room setup in the first video. also worth noting the fleeting trip to one of the injection moulding suppliers - showing how individual parts are sourced from small business / family business that are often a single tool or skill supplier who today are making buttons for their connectors and tomorrow are making buttons for something else. @musht - the problem is that’s not how it works (mostly) out there. There is zero communication or feedback between the suppliers and construction elements in the chain - generic lighting co get “a design” from a designer that they sell; once the order is in they contract generic assembly co to actually make it to the specification they state (often with neither party having any real world understanding or experience of /what/ they are making) with the assembly co buying in assemblies from other assembly co (we need 10,000 green LED’s, some of those DMX interface things, some casings roughly this size/shape, 500 power supplies) often with price as their primary concern but also with no direct understanding of how the product will be used. They then assemble all the units and hand them over to the generic packaging co (or, shudder, flight case “manufacturer”) to be packed up and then handed to another shipping co who will export them. there are products it works just fine fore but anything that needs a long lifespan/support/replicability it’s not appropriate for and for technical products it introduces a lot of variables in the process (6 or 7 buyers each making judgement calls about the suitability of parts without any industry relevant knowledge) that make it something of a lottery. Because of how generic and interchangeable the whole ecosystem is people and companies regularly change completely. One sales person who supplied us with some specialist RF stuff later moved to a golf club company and still spams us trying to get us to become a golf importer. A company that previously manufactured 12,000 theatre seats for us is now a nuts / bolts manufacturer.

I keep flipping between whether I like or loath this manufacturing style - There are things its good for and it's a system I've used a few times for things that could be broken down easily into simple components that could be batch manufactured like this. What always makes me flip to loathing it is when ever we manufacture something in house it becomes quickly clear how design/development, sales, specification, manufacturing and shipping are always much better when fully integrated and working together; seeing someone assemble something and noticing how they have had to come up with little work arounds for fiddly parts informs a better redesign of the product to make it more manufacturable, finding out that making this piece 3mm smaller means they can cut an extra 20 out of a sheet of material thus saving money, finding out that the specific knobs mean that once packaged up the whole item is 40cm3 bigger in volume than if we had smaller knobs or a touchscreen are all things a designer doesn't discover unless they're integral to the manufacture / assembly process which can make huge cost savings to manufacturing costs. BUT then you also need someone to spot that those parts are fiddly because its a onetime install and reduces the weight overall, making the part 3mm smaller means it now has non-standard sizing so other connectors (or gobos) won't easily fit into it so you (or your customer) will have to purchase more expensive bespoke parts forever, that those knobs are chunky because they will have to be accessed by riggers wearing gloves hanging from the roof of an arena in the rain / or if you've gone with a touchscreen the operator will have to take their eyes off the stage to look to see what they are operating when before it was touch alone. The batch/piecemeal manufacturing industries eliminate virtually all the opportunity for genuine improvements and innovation (or at least slow them down dramatically) sacrificing it all for a convenient (or cheap) one time manufacturing process.

Wow… The standard business model for manufacturing in that part of the world is a fancy office / showroom that is owned by a lighting company, with fancy signs and demo areas. Then all the manufacturing / assembly contracted out to the generic manufacturing assembly co’s who rent out rooms and people for a day or two at a time to undertake specific manufacturing task based on their speciality (one company laser cut things, one company assemble motors and gearboxes, one company assemble lense units, etc) The footage shows many different assembly rooms yet look, there’s not one single piece of custom tooling, jigs etc. if you’re a manufacturer regularly assembling your own products you would have jigs and templates because it makes assembly much cheaper and more dependable in the long run. If you’re a generic manufacturing co you’d have rooms with large flat tables, absolutely no industry specific signs, posters or items on the walls / shelves and you’d be using adjustable spanner’s and generic pneumatic screwdrivers because tomorrow you’ve got to manufacture something completely different. if you’re a pro lighting manufacture you’d have cradles the partially assembled lights travel in (or at least trays) because in the long run that’s cheaper and more dependable, if you’re a manufacture for hire co you wrap delicate things in bits of tissue paper and have random piles of cardboard boxes all over the desk. if you’re a pro lighting manufacture you’d have a specific tester that plugs directly into each light to put it through its paces, or at the very least you’d have a dedicated DMX controller with a pre-programmed sequence designed to test every feature of each light identically and consistently. If you’re a generic manufacturing co then you’d have to go unit to unit scrolling through the on board controls and or a generic cheapo DMX desk that you manually wiggle the faders on to do a basic test to make sure that the units broadly speak have been assembled correctly. There are full service in-house manufacture companies in China but the bulk of products (especially those coming from the export / trade zones) are being made in exactly the way I’ve described and it is why off-brand products can be great value in a single purchase but (almost without fail) don’t offer any consistency across batches, have poor documentation and are almost impossible to get spares for since records were not kept of which were used in each batch manufacturing process.

And to be even more picky - that’s not a moving head factory; that’s one of the 20,000 generic “happy good luck sunshine flower manufacturing co” rooms rented by the day in Chinese version of wework “factories” that today is assembling lights and tomorrow is assembling windchimes and the day after are assembling toasters. The complete lack of jigs, templates, holders, specific tools, etc makes me shudder because the variations and deviations that’s introducing are exponential. We make one-off objects with more precision and control than this factory does. I appreciate this is how a chunk of things in the world are made now but it’s literally industry stepped back 200 years.

Literally decades of experience shows that £2 nitrate covered gloves are the solution. Sure there are more expensive gloves with short term improvements but every year (without fail) the basic gloves correctly fitted are better, more durable than all other types overall.

Just to clarify …. Is this “the chandelier” that in the show will drop down and /almost/ hit the audience. If so this is an effect that must be specifically and precisely designed and specified for each and every venue it is performed in. There is no generic “safety certificate” for such an effect because it depends entirely on what the venue can rig, the size of the drop, the staff (and qualifications) who will be operating it etc. As an amateur company you should be contracting a team to deliver this effect, giving them clear contracts as to what you expect to happen and understand the cost implications of dropping a large scenic item over an audience safely and dependably every night. If you can’t fulfil all of these criteria then you shouldn’t even begin to consider trying to present this effect because …. You WILL hurt someone.

Two red flags in business, any company that factors their invoices or insists on anything more than 30day terms is living entirely on credit and barely keeping their head above water. We wont deal with either.

It's not just "high quality" fluid - it's choosing the right fluid; different machines are calibrated/designed for different temperatures which will effect how it evaporates / blockages. Running at 110v is also problematic - almost every smoke machine on the planet was designed for 220/240v operation and then reverse engineered to create a 110v version so heaters are never quite as powerful, pump ratios are never quite the same and parts can be harder to find. You might have more success with machines designed and manufactured specifically for the US / 110v markets rather than machines designed for both as they will, by definition, be better suited to that power and so be less prone to problems. A cast "one piece" block heater/heat exchange is the proper way to make a smoke machine and leads to more dependable smoke production and better operational efficiency. Other than a mild acid flush there really isn't any other recommended way to retroactively deal with blocked heaters. Guitar wire may work but risks getting jammed (as you have found) and can also cause scratches inside which change the surface area or even create a weak spot. Compressed air is rarely a good idea as the system was never designed to be pressurised and, since blockages in smoke machines are almost always caused by a gradual build up there's not anywhere for the blockage to be blown.

Proper preventative maintenance and cleaning cycles. Using the correct fluid for the machine, using a high quality machine with servicing and long life usage built into the design.

The studio has a fixed (telescopic) grandstand at ground level and upper level balcony on three sides- whilst it can in theory be used in any orientation there is very much a clearly defined orientation and SL/SR that any tech who walks into the space would understand immediately. The original design intention was that the iron would be lifted and it use the stage house (which could be allocated wholly or partially to either auditorium) thus creating a stage house where SL & SR were different as I previously described. As I also mentioned these grand architect’s ideas quickly failed in the real world because (for example) no one was making shows that played to a 300 capacity audience that also needed a 20m wide stage with full automated flying. Outside of a couple of short, in house productions designed specifically to highlight the quirky design of Curve the whole concept of 2 auditoria sharing a single stage house has been completely abandoned because the technology didn’t actually exist, the practicalities of running the space were too complicated and there’s no touring product being created for such a configuration. Curve runs now as a reasonably successful 2 auditoria venue but it is doing so along entirely traditional configuration and operational models, not the magical new model that the original architect envisioned.

As someone who’s engineered many in the round performance spaces I know that. But the difference here is that because the space is shared in an ever changing rota of shows that convention doesn’t work. Sometimes this side is stage left, other times it’s stage right, sometimes it’s both if the house is split 50:50 we could call it east but then every single visiting actor / crew / creative would have to be retrained to understand the completely non-standard layout terminology and even with the best training in the world there’s still huge scope for errors and mistakes to be made. Everyone overlooks how important “standardisation” is to the modern theatre and concert industry - you could innovate the greatest new technical solution or venue in the history of theatre but if it doesn’t seamlessly slip into existing work flows and technology it simply won’t get adopted and a lot of money will have been wasted.

Curves original design used “acoustic curtains” (a magical, mythical product that architects seem to think are an actual thing) to deal with sound bleed so that both auditoriums could use the same stage house…. Very quickly they switched to the studio just being used as a studio with the iron firmly shut and the stage house being used almost exclusively in a traditional way with the main auditorium. secondary issues also cropped up, what is SL & SR when you have two mirror image auditoria for example, one shared space accessed by multiple auditoriums (and thus control systems) resulted in many technical problems that you can probably guess. I believe that now the two rigs are effectively physically separated to keep things simple and only spliced back together on the rare occasion they are to be used as a single space.

Curve Leicester has a single mainstage house with iron on both sides so that it can be used for either the main auditorium or the smaller studio space…. that said like all “innovative” theatre buildings the feature is never actually used because shows are created to work in the widest number of traditional venues rather than for a single cities weird venue.

Just a practicality note - it’s often better to create your models from scratch than take others and scale them. For example someone might have a perfect model of some steel deck with correct wall thickness steel tube for all the bracing and legs. At many print scales that might be fine but when you shrink it down to print at the scale you’re using those walls will be thinner than the printer can print…. So will fail. doing your own parts / models means you know what level of detail you actually need to use and will result in more, easier, reliable model prints.

Exactly - just like the world of submersible building key safety processes were dropped by people who didn’t actually understand why they were created in the first place.