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gobo making


daoops

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Yes I do know how to make gobos. And yes at my home. How easy you find it is up to you, and your co-dwellers may or may NOT find it a home occupation.

 

Finalise all aspects of the design and produce a good transparent artwork with good blacks. It will help to do the design as large as possible then reduce to size later. Take some thin shim metal (RS sell it) clean it and paint one side and spray the other side with photo resist (pos os neg according to your artwork)

 

UV expose develop and etch in ferric chloride then wash off the resist and strip off the paint.

 

Remember you must draw and etch the cutting out of the gobo diameter but you only have to etch round the edge if you want a block to drop out. You must tag all the metal islands together at the design stage.

 

Remember also that I graduated in chemistry before entering the events sector via a circuitous route.

 

Simple gobos are better made from aluminium foil and a scalpel.

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I personally wouldn't make my own gobos for use in Movers.

 

Why not?

 

The finished produced is the same, but smaller.

It may be smaller but also a lot more expensive if it goes wrong. if A gobo in a generic goes wrong the most its likley to cost is a new lamp, in a mover it could damage the whole gobo wheel and take some dichroics with it.

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The thing is that the gobos that I wanna make is company logos, and theese gobos will be used 1 time, and it cost to much to just buy one gobo, and most of the companies don't wan't it then.

Company logos? I'm taking a bit of a punt, then, and guessing that you're looking to project a company's logo for some sort of corporate event or presentation (correct me if I'm wrong). IMO, the best thing would be to get a quote for having someone like DHA make some proper gobos for you, and let the client know that to have their logo loaded into the moving lights for projection will cost {x} pounds. If they have the budget for it, great. If not, well, too bad.

 

Would you want to risk your good reputation by using a home-made gobo in such a situation where any sort of failure (if it was to burn out, for example) would be highly visible and most embarassing for all concerned? I know I wouldn't. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly. OK, so it'll cost a few quid more, but I'm sure it'll be money well spent.

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I made a gobo for a uni show but wouldnt reccommend doing it for something professional. I did it out of the bottom of a ppir dish (soft, easy to cut and works well in a non-moving lantern) however, the slightest mistake is extremely visible. I ended up making me 3 or 4 times because it was about a tenth of a millimetre out. Dpont forget the light is projected so when you put a gobo in, the image is god-knows how muh bigger that the actual gobo, making any mistakes really obvious.

 

On saying that, If you can do it neat enough then its worth a go (providing it doesnt kill any lanterns) but logo's can sometimes be tricky and you'd have to get them perfect for the companies to be pleased.

 

Just my opinion

 

Em

xxx

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I have found a company here I my district, that laser-cut's steel, this should work I think. But is there a common thickness on the gobo's ?

The thing with costum made gobo's from ex. Rosco is the time it takes. Normally I don't have mostly one week to obtain the gobo, and Rosco takes upto 3 week to ship overseas when it's talk about 1 gobo. I just don't need 10 gobo's of the same company.

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In my opinion, the company logo will probably be too hard to hand cut, as a mover gobo is so small. Does it have to wiz about the room to set points? I was looking for an Opti product that has a mirror on the end, but I forget its name, yet I Found this Site. There are a few lanterns of interest there.

5 or so years ago, I made my own slides, popped them into a slide projector, and using a slow rotating motor with a mirror attached projected images around a room. Although not a professional looking bit of kit, I still use it quite a bit. And it cost nothing, although the motor came from a photocopier, and had a high torque.

HTH, Rob.

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