Interesting Chinese Moving Head Factory assembly video

[kerry davies]

Ah but the very early Martin lights were designed and built by a bunch of long-haired and very stoned hippies which meant my DJs could keep them going ad infinitum.

It definitely had its advantages, rubber bands and wobbly spindles and all.

[xllx]

I believe that Clay Paky used to use home workers a lot for manufacture of sub assemblies for Goldenscans and the like in the 90's. A lot of the soldering was apparently done on various Italian kitchen tables. 

[indyld]

5 minutes ago, xllx said:

I believe that Clay Paky used to use home workers a lot for manufacture of sub assemblies for Goldenscans and the like in the 90's. A lot of the soldering was apparently done on various Italian kitchen tables. 

This may also explain why Teatro stuff seemed roughly the same quality as old biscuit tins and cheap cheese graters.

[xllx]

12 minutes ago, indyld said:

This may also explain why Teatro stuff seemed roughly the same quality as old biscuit tins and cheap cheese graters.

Teatro was a subsidiary of Coemar wasn't it?

[indyld]

2 minutes ago, xllx said:

Teatro was a subsidiary of Coemar wasn't it?

May well be, just remember it being Italian and somewhat cheap and not altogether un-nasty.

[timsabre]

I think most of the newfangled intelligent lighting from that era was assembled that way. Certainly I was involved with many of the UK light manufacturers at that time and they all did it like that - assemblies farmed out to various homeworkers then returned to the factory for final assembly by hand in small batches. Several of the UK manufacturers were spinoffs of metal fabrication workshops who saw an opportunity in the marketplace.

[Richard CSL]

we miss Madscan. NJD. and Abstract. Those were the days. A lot of research and development took place back then, I remember it well. 

I bought scanners from NJD the first stepper motor ones, they were too jerky for stage work and had to be returned, soon after someone thought of accelleration curves and all was resolved, those RC servo units did quite well though in theatre not Disco as they wore out too quickly.

[paulears]

Madscans! I'd forgotten about them. The plastic covers I managed to break on all of them, but they did the job and were not bad really.

I asked a friend about manufacturing. He's an engineer in a non-theatre/events field and he looked at that video and told me that that is perfectly acceptable engineering in the non-mass produced assembly style. He said that jigs really do not have to be ultra sophisticated. All they need to do is be precise enough for the job in hand. Location setting and angles being common. He said he looks for different things when assessing manufacturing. It's the removal of manual tools for mechanical ones. So you have screwdrivers and spanners replaced with at the first level, rechargeable power tools, then the next step is air operated tooling. 

Tools that are quick and efficient but are not limited to single processes. You can make a simple jig that is automated, quick and requires minimal operator skill - but you then need people to fix them, and when they fail, everything stops. 

The manufacturing processes are quite straightforward, but if you are going to make a batch of 200 units, that is very different from 20000 - if you want 2000, that's a difficult one. Spend a lot and hope you eventually need 20000, or just continue the 200 system. 

 

I guess we all see the Chinese equipment continually change. we complain that after 3 months the DMX attributes may have changed or the 3 facet prism is a 5 facet prism. That is just their product evolution. These things won't ever be mass produced. It's a bit like loudspeaker production - you could automate so much, but slapping sheets onto CNC machines manually, and then assembling by hand seems the way they still do that. People with filler and sanders.

[James Remo]

On 12/18/2023 at 5:32 PM, xllx said:

I believe that Clay Paky used to use home workers a lot for manufacture of sub assemblies for Goldenscans and the like in the 90's. A lot of the soldering was apparently done on various Italian kitchen tables. 

Didn’t Pulsar or Cambridge do a lot of clay paky’s boards? 

[timsabre]

Yes Pulsar designed and built Clay Paky's electronics and software from Goldenscan 1 onwards.

[musht]

If you've ever had an Italian vehicle, would understand why Clay Paky made a selling point of electronics by Pulsar....