Rigging 50" LED TV

[Jonathan Mellor]

Just bought two Samsung 50" TVs for various jobs we've got coming up. My question is what's the best and most secure way of rigging said tv on a horizontal scaff bar?

[CongoBlueCalum]

Your best bet is to speak to Unicol. They do a Hook which hangs from the scaff bar, which then goes down an aluminium pole, and connects to the back of the plasma using a plate which screws into the vesa mount holes on the back of the plasma. Head over to unicol.com or drop them an email with the model of the plasma and they will put the whole package together for you.

[top-cat]

Unicol are good but a very expensive way of doing things!

 

Any standard VESA (will most likely be MIS-F) mount plate can be attached to a half coupler using an 11mm hole and an M10 (17mm) bolt. It will sit captive in the half coupler, and secure with a nyloc to the other side.

 

Question is - do you want the screen to sit in line with the horizontal bar, or drop below it? If you want to drop below, you could consider the new Doughty Universal Rigging kit to make a nice easy to use drop kit with different lengths available. That would be the nice way. Of course the cheap way would just be to orientate your half coupler vertically and use a 90-deg coupler at the top.

 

Adding rigging straight to a VESA mount steel plate will be a far more affordable and more versatile way of rigging the screen than having to buy a different length Unicol arm for each occasion.

[Jevans]

The Unicol kit is pretty standard for projector/screen flying and it's certainly robust but we've always found a couple of infuriating things about it; not only as top-cat says is the pole length fixed but the pole-to-scaff hook that's normally on top of it (this one) has a bolt that has to be done up about a quarter turn at a time with an AJ, which takes a while. (It is of course possible that we've all completely missed the obvious way of doing it quickly...)

 

They also seem to have a habit of using weird bolt and allen key sizes - our universal projector mounts adjust using imperial sized allen keys, and when we got our big projector cradle we removed the pole mount from it to put a standard half coupler on it. Only problem was the mounting bolt was in the bottom of the pole mount and was thus inaccessible to a spanner, and we didn't have a socket large enough. We ended up going to the nearly fair setting up and asking the guy assembling the dodgems if he had one - and he did! :)

 

I would stick to getting to standard scaff fixing as soon as possible, and then you can sort it all out with scaff drops etc.

[Pete McCrea]

Unicol is fairly Universal - most AV companies use it, so you know you pick up additional bits if needed. There's nothing to stop you buying column and cutting to specific sizes easily. We've also started putting doughty trigger couples on to the sockets, giving a better coupling to the scaff column.

 

As we've got stock, I won't be swapping it out, and I would recommend it as providing a designed system engineered to support the required loads.

[top-cat]

the pole-to-scaff hook that's normally on top of it (this one) has a bolt that has to be done up about a quarter turn at a time with an AJ, which takes a while. (It is of course possible that we've all completely missed the obvious way of doing it quickly...)

 

 

If there is, I haven't worked it out either!

 

As you say, I genuinely think the earlier in the chain that you can involve a standard scaff fitting, the more versatile your end product will be. But also cheaper - since Unicol are not known for being cheap!

 

That said, the scaff way I mentioned doesn't give much option for tilting the screen.

 

If you want a ready-made product along the unicol lines that can also tilt the screen... I think the one Audipack do is a better option than the Unicol and AFAIK not priced much differently. http://www.audipack....russ_mount.html Unlike the Unicol it is telescopic for a range of different lengths, and incorporates a much better pipe clamp.

[David Lee]

Err, you use your fingers to screw the bolt up to the scaff/ truss and just nip it tight with an AJ.

 

Agree that unicol are expensive, but for a one stop solution they are very good.

[top-cat]

Err, you use your fingers to screw the bolt up to the scaff/ truss and just nip it tight with an AJ.

 

Everyone I've ever tried has been way too tight for fingers!

 

Agree that unicol are expensive, but for a one stop solution they are very good.

 

But they're not, are they?

 

"Very good" is not the right term. "Perfectly functional" is about right. They're just the original, so hire companies who used to have lots keep buying them, and new companies see the old hire companies with them and think "well if they use them they must be the best".

 

There are loads of brands now - Audipack as I stated being one prominent one - who offer solutions to this product that I would consider "very good". Unicol is a scaff pipe with a VESA-mount plate on one end and a folded piece of metal on the other, it's hardly revolutionary.

[MarkPAman]

(It is of course possible that we've all completely missed the obvious way of doing it quickly...)

 

 

This is what you need .Once you get used to it, much better than an AJ for many of the jobs you use an AJ for.

[David Lee]

Funny, have totally opposite experience with the bolts in the hook, only tight one I found was where the bolt had been bent slightly. Every other one has been fine with fingers to thread it up to the truss.

 

Not sure I would like to see the audiopack ones where looks count, in corporate world . Something about those exhaust pipe clamps look a bit heath Robinson to me. Just an opinion before anybody takes offence. The unicol ones just look cleaner to the eye.

[the kid]

(It is of course possible that we've all completely missed the obvious way of doing it quickly...)

 

 

This is what you need .Once you get used to it, much better than an AJ for many of the jobs you use an AJ for.

 

Well dam it, those are what I have been looking for for ages. I saw something similar at PLASA 06 or 06 and never got one, and never seen one since.

and 100% not finding them other than ali express

[Jonathan Mellor]

For the first couple of jobs they'll go on, I'd what them to sit in line with the horizontal bar.

 

Although I totally understand Unicol is what most companies use, having it all on scaff half-couplers would be cheaper, simpler and easier to do different drops with existing scaff we have.

 

 

 

 

 

[top-cat]

For the first couple of jobs they'll go on, I'd what them to sit in line with the horizontal bar.

 

Although I totally understand Unicol is what most companies use, having it all on scaff half-couplers would be cheaper, simpler and easier to do different drops with existing scaff we have.

 

In that case, you should be able to just get a fairly standard heavy duty VESA mount wall bracket type thing, drill an 11mm hole through the middle for an m10 bolt, and go straight in with your half coupler.

 

You'll need to put a nut the other side of course. You can keep the spacing by just adding a nut to all the bolts between the bracket and the TV itself.

 

It's pretty low tech but works fine for me every time.

[TomHoward]

Just spec the Unicol UNCT1 "grenade socket with truss clamp" rather than the one with the hook - the unbolt the half coupler, fit a trigger clamp, and wonder why they don't supply it with a trigger clamp in the first place...

 

http://www.ac-et.com/images/products/large/UNCT1.jpg