my life

A reflection on starting a fabrication company

2013-03-07T19:03:00.002-06:00

So, I guess it's just a little over a year ago that I decided I would devote pretty much every penny I had to start a small R&D and fabrication company called Entertainment Fabrication. It all started when there were products I was using nearly every day that seemed like they were lacking in much needed features. Even out in the field I would hear various other people complain about what we were using. So it seemed like a logical decision, I like building stuff, I see a need, I'm gonna build epic solutions.
But I guess I bit off more than I could chew. I soon found myself wearing more hats than I ever wanted to. As the only person running the show I had to research, design, build, test, get opinions on, market, and foot the bill for everything I wanted to do. I quickly learned how expensive running a shop could be and how steep the learning curve was.
Here's a short list of the main challenges I've faced:

lack of space - I have had to make do working out of a garage, when I really need around 2000sq. ft.
convincing people that my product is worth the extra expense - I don't have mass manufacturing capabilities, my stuff costs often over twice as much as what's on the market, I have to add features, quality, and anything else I can think of to make it worth every penny they spend.
convincing people to switch - people like the brands they have been using for years, they don't want to switch, I have to convince people that I'll be around for a long time and am worth investing in.
lack of time - Right?? like who doesn't need more, but a part time job, full time working toward a BSME, plus starting up my own stuff, leaves no time for anything else.
finding work - This is getting sorta obvious I guess, but it can be harder than you think to find buyers. (Even when proposing the best ideas, sometimes nobody cares enough to "fix" it.)

There have been plenty of times I wanted to sell everything and give up, but friends and family would always remind me why I started the company and encourage me to keep going. I am continually having to learn more and more skills in the shop and business side of things, but every month it gets easier and easier.
Earlier this year I resigned from my "day" job and went back to school to finish my engineering degree. That has given me more time for my company, but still mentally taxes me to the extreme every day.
But it does have it's rewards, when you see something you built being enjoyed by people it is pretty cool. When an expert in an industry tells you your product has potential and is better than what is out there, it can encourage you to keep pushing through the tough times. And most of all, I enjoy what I'm doing.
I have finally gotten to the point where I need more help and have started asking people I know to help me sell items, find contracts, and build stuff. It's neat to see friends get excited about the same things I do.
When I hang out with a group of new people and they ask what I do, everyone seems to think it is such a cool job, and maybe it is, I get to build something from nothing, destroy stuff, and play with some big toys here and there. But to me, the awesome is like the bacon in the pot of beans... sometimes it just makes everything else tolerable. Besides, I'm not going to tell people all the bad stuff in my job.
So, yeah, this was random compared with my usual blogs, but I delivered product to a reseller today, for a display so they can try to sell it. And I was thinking back on everything I've been through and thought I'd post a short little something in case it could encourage someone else who is starting up their own company.
-Steven A.

fitting a power feed to a mill.

2012-12-28T22:33:00.004-06:00

So, I have a lot of aluminum to machine for a project coming up, and I decided to go ahead and get a power feed (Grizzly H8370), coolant, and DRO on my mill. The power feed came in first, so I'll write about them as they come in. I'm sure there are some professionals that will have issues with what I did... and if you do I'd love to hear your comments, but it works so far, and I wanted to write this in case anyone else is considering putting a power feed on their grizzly mill and talk about some of the issues I ran into.

I have a Grizzly G3358 in the shop, And though I am not a big fan of their stuff; for starting out, learning, and breaking, they work ok, and I do have a few different machines of theirs. In the case of the mill, I had to basically take apart every moving part and use acetone to strip the grease off. What they coat everything with is very waxy and causes everything to bind. I know they do say to strip it off before using, but they only mention putting a coating on all bare metal to keep it from rusting. I found it elsewhere coating other moving part inside the table and head, so I recommend taking it nearly completely apart and stripping the lead-screws, quill, dovetails, etc.

So the directions have their usual bare minimum of info to get you up and going. It looked like it'd be an easy task so I went to the shop and started after I got off from my day job. But after an hour of frustration I decided to come back the next day. I ended up spending about 5 hours total, but that included doing routing oiling. In addition to the 1/2" wrench and 3 sizes of allen keys they tell you about in the beginning, you will need a drill with a spotting bit, some graphite based lube, the proper tools to remove all of your existing limits, and a small common screwdriver to remove your left hand wheel. Also, in my case, a hammer, 3/16" punch, and metal chisel.

So here's a poor picture of the unit, but I thought the sticker was funny and didn't think to take a pic of the whole thing...

Installation was pretty straight forward and according to the directions, minus not having a spotting bit handy everything was going smoothly. To the left you can see the left hand wheel removed, I needed the small common screwdriver for this.

I mounted the motor and noticed that the gears were not lining up very well. There are slots so you can slide the motor (white housing with the little gear) in and out, but it was hitting the side of my table. So, after double checking that I was doing everything right. I figured my options were to machine one or the other down about .25"

So, I had to take the power feed back off, remove the gear from the lead screw. And remove the little black part that locks them together. This is where I had to use the hammer and punch, as there is a pin going through the black thing and the lead screw. When you are putting this all back together, also check it 180 degrees when you are lining up the holes. Mine appeared to be not centered and after jamming the whole thing trying the wrong way, realized what was going on...

Next, I had to remove the bearing plate, it has 2 allen screws in it and then is just held on by the paint (what I used the chisel for). The power feed will cover all this so I wasn't concerned about chipping the finish here. Notice though that there are pens that align it all, so you are trying to pry it out, not down... cause if you bend you lead screw getting this off, you will be in a heap of issues later on. I ran my table all the way to the right before doing any banging on it to help prevent any damage to the machine.

If you've actually been following this, you will have to get creative at this point, now that your table is half taken apart, you need to take off about .3" of material, I'm not sure how deep I ended up going, I just kept cutting till I was about .125" from the ball oiler.
I have never actually machined cast iron before, so I wasn't sure what the best bit would be, I used a cheep 4 flute 1/2" end mill, 1180rpm, started with side cutting in .02" passes cause it was chattering a lot if I tried to cut more at a time... prolly since the table was half taken apart.

Here's the finished part, I cleaned it up really well (after this picture was taken) to make sure there were no pieces of metal to wear on anything. Note that you will want to re-oil this part really well (via the ball oiler) once it's installed.

Got it put on, looks pretty sweet I think.

And finally I got the power feed re-mounted. I wish it could have been ordered in green to match the mill... Below you can see how the gears now match up much better. Now for a few more comments to wrap up:
1. There aren't any directions as to what the speed's relate to, it is 0-9, the website says 4-200 rpm, I guess we could then use some math to roughly figure out ipm feed rate from this assuming it's a fairly linear speed increase.
2. The drive gear that you fit onto the lead screw only has one set screw. Due to the gears slightly loose fit on the lead screw shaft, when you tighten the set screw it pushes it slightly off center. So, when using it in manual, the hand wheels are now stiff on one side and smooth after 180 degrees as the gear teeth push closer and further from the motors gear.

3. The limit switch as about 1/4" of travel before it clicks and shuts the motor down, which then travels about .2" more before coming to a complete stop. It seems cheap... plus the t-slot stops I am supposed to use do not fit in this mill. They are plastic and barely to large to fit in the slot well. I am assuming that they are not supposed to be moved once set? I don't know, I will be modifying it so that it sits lower or to the side and I can still use my standard limits for projects I'm doing by hand... I also have an idea for making an optical trigger that kicks the "transmission" straight to neutral so it will be quicker, easier to set, and more useful for what I'm doing...
4. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with the cord for the limits? It's just hanging there in the front getting caught on everything...

Well, That's about all I got. Hope this helps some of y'all, if you have any questions, or need help on yours, leave me a comment and I'll respond as soon as I can. I'll be posting more as I modify the rest of the toys onto the mill...

'till next time,
-Steven

Midas Pro2 review

2012-11-18T17:40:00.000-06:00

So, I finally had the opportunity to run a show on the newish Midas Pro2. I had been hoping to get this chance ever since it came out. The Pro2 has a very compact size for handling 56 channels. I won’t go into a lot of the basics since those are really easy to look up on their website, but I'll talk about my experience... Due to its size, the typical console stand that was sent was way too big for it, luckily I had a demo of the Mini Console Rokker from Entertainment Fabrication and it lowered it down a bit so I could see the screen better, and didn’t stick out into the aisle as much...

On powering up, it did send a small DC pop through my PA, worth muting your system if it can easily be done, but nothing that would make me power everything off first if my amps were already on. The console didn't come zero'd out, and all the defaults that I could find had been written over except for one that was warning that it would make the console not accept future upgrades. So for the next hour, I erased channel names, copied a flat channel across all the channels, unassigned VCA's, re-did the pop groups, and tried to figure out patching.
I am going to start with the screen since it is where you will spend most of your time. It's nice and large and has a mirror output on the back via DVI. Since the screen wasn't touch, they were able to make all the information smaller and fit a lot more per page than you would expect from perhaps an M7CL or similar. Of course that being said there were several functions that would have been much nicer as a touch instead of having to use their very stiff and small trackball. My wrist was hurting by the time I got through soundcheck.
One thing I liked about how the information was displayed on the screen was that the right 1/4 almost always displayed an expanded view of the selected channel or parameter you were on (unless you pulled up a system function like patching or naming), the left hand side gave a decent overview of channel activity for the 8 channel's faders below the screen, but lacked in one main area - there was no overview of the eq's.
Moving on to the right of the display, is the section of knobs and switches for eq, gain, gate, etc. for your selected channel. I found it a little lacking in that I really dislike having to use arrows to page through the different filters in a parametric eq. it seems much slower, and I am constantly having to double check what filter am I on. The only real confusing thing here though, is the gain knob has a swap button, that changes it's function from stagebox gain -> trim gain (digital trim) -> delay. this was confusing at first since the system tech told me the trim gain was the analogue preamp, and stagebox gain was digital, and I was trying to figure out why all my levels were so low...
To the right of that is a bank of mutes, meters, and stuff for all the 16 auxs and 8 matrixes. For Midas to have dedicated nearly twice as much space to this as to the previous section they must believe it's really important, but I couldn't really find a use for it since I could pull all that info to the faders.
So there are 16 input faders, and then 8 VCA/ output master faders. These last 8 do not have any meters on them though, which was really odd since you can expand the inputs to all 24 faders (one of my favorite features), but if you are using them for outputs, you have the meters in the bank above to reference, so it's not too bad.
More on the fader sections, there are only 6 characters on the scribble strips, I would rather have had more, it seems unnecessary in this computer driven age to have to abbreviate so much, or at least it would be nice to be able to have a long name on the screen.
The back-light for the displays can be colored to your choice, which makes it really nice to be able to quickly find money mics and such. But since those were built into the select buttons for each channel, selecting became a bit clunky to me.Since you can have either 16 or 24 channels viewable at a time, this is where many manufacturers get awkward solutions in my opinion. Midas has an interesting solution in that there are scroll buttons to the right or left. Imagine that every input and output is on a giant loop of channels and you are scrolling by 8 one way or another. the only issue I had with it was that sometimes I'd get a bit lost as to where I was (because I had a few bank that ended up with similar names) and a "home" button would have been nice.
Now I really like the POP groups, it's a really convenient way to view a small group of channels especially if they are on several different layers. But the only thing I didn't like was that, since there were no custom layers, I couldn't re-order the channels within a pop group. I think it should be fairly easy to implement within the setup dialogue.
Finally I would like to mention sonic quality. Everything seemed to have to be way over eq'd to make it sound right compared with every other console I've used in that room. Even something like an sm58 I had to dial about 8 db out of 220ish where I would normally only cut 2 or 3 db out. I know everybody says they are legendary preamps, and they have a nice warm quality to them. but I did not find it useful for the show I was doing.(think early rock and roll) I would carry around outboard FX if I was using this console. The delay was ok once I got used to it, but the reverb left a lot lacking. I have Waves presets I made over a decade ago that sound better. As you increased the reverb time (max 8 sec) past about 1.5 sec. it starts getting a "tremolo" sound to it. I tried all the different presets for hall, plate, room... but they were all the same.
I have no Idea about the remote aps, My computers OS is too old to run the mac version, and I don't have an iPad.
Now of course these are just my opinions, and what I was able to do in the 1 day I had it. Feel free to comment below if you find out I'm wrong on something that can't be done, or if you like something that I didn't, I'd love to hear how it worked for you.
'Till next time
-Steven A.

episode 7 - cannons and a stage

2012-01-26T00:07:00.000-06:00

so, it's been a while since I've written anything, but I've been way super swamped with projects.

I got a huge shipment of steel in the other day, it took some finagling to maneuver 10' pieces on a pallet jack. but I did finally get it in. most of it is for those simple tilt stands, and the new universal bases.

here's most of the parts for the confetti cannons, and and one fully assembled. they are going out this weekend and just need to be painted black. they all operate on 12v dc and I'm hoping to soon have DMX control. but for now it is a 4 channel controller with arm switches and a fire button.

So, this past Sunday I was contracted in to re-rig the truss on the stage. I was able to rent a 36' lift this time so I finally didn't have to do a ton of climbing around in the ceiling. well it started out as this...

and 15 hours later was something like this. I did learn an important lesson while I took this picture, you will notice that the lift is at the other end of the truss. I was planning on repelling off this end, but realized that not only did I forget my rope, but I had on the wrong harness. So, yeah, have fun gettin' down from that:-)

I had no hinges for this truss, so some pipe, cheeseboroughs, and extra shackles should do the trick. I was asked if it was legal to do this. I replied that the police haven't arrested me yet. lol. But I assure you, everything is hung completely safely.

well, that's all for today, tomorrow is going to be a long day for me, I just found out last minute that I have to be in early. so since I only have 5 hours till I have to be back up...

30 days episode 6 - tangent lines in google's sketchup

2012-01-17T06:05:00.000-06:00

So, I use Google's Sketchup on an almost daily basis, and compared to Auto Cad, it definitely lacks some features. But over the years I have developed some techniques to help get around it's surprisingly simplistic interface.
If you haven't already watched my video check it out:

it goes through it all step by really fast step.
I'll show you two trick with circles, how to create tangent lines off of, and how to create a circle from 3 points. As you probably know, Sketchup only allows you to specify centerpoint and radius. By default sketchup uses 24 sides/ points to draw the circle, but you can type in any value for more precision. I like using 100 or 360.

ok, so on to tangent lines, let's say we want to connect two circles for a v-belt for a pulley or something create two circles and group them together

draw a line between the centers of each circles and use the center of that line to draw a circle of the same diameter. then move a copy of the smaller circle to the top of the larger. the center of the smaller should be at the top point of the larger. note that if you are connecting circles of the same size it kinda messes up the whole process. simply draw a line out perpendicular from the connecting line and copy the connecting line to where the perpendicular one and the circle cross...

draw a circle from the center of the larger to touch the bottom of the smaller copy. then draw a line from the same center through the crossing of the newest circle and the one we drew in the previous picture. then draw the line that is blue in this picture.

now copy the blue line up to where that line crosses the larger circle.

and we're done! fairly straight forward once you do it several times. I know I kinda breezed through all this, let me know if you need any of it explained better...

30 days episode 5 - new R&D and a new song

2012-01-11T09:46:00.000-06:00

Hey guys, unfortunately it has been a long time sine I wrote, not because I really forgot to, but just not that much has happened that I thought would be enteresting. So, I'll write a few things that are coming up.
One of the original projects I built was an automated balloon drop and some cheep but really efficient confetti cannons. Those of course are left at a previous job, and now it looks like I will get the opportunity to re-create a version 2 of each. That should be a lot of fun, and testing always means getting to shoot fun projectiles from the tubes just for grins. If the contract goes through, then they will have to be finished before the end of the month, so look forward to pics, and video of all that. Also going to start running a whole lot of those stands through the shop. and if there's time left in the month I'll prototype a new base for truss and a new speaker stand.
I also have finally recorded a version of one of the songs I've writing for a while.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXNd5OuCtlE
Leave comments on the video and lemme know what you think. Hopefully I will post some more songs I've written soon.

30 days episode 4 - so, is there anywhere I CAN carry weapon?

2012-01-06T18:52:00.000-06:00

So, it's no secret that I enjoy anything dangerous, cool guns, and stuff that blows up. But recently my friend and I were talking about how frustratingly few places a CHL holder can actually carry. After perusing through a 100 pages of rules and stuff from www.txdps.state.tx.us I finally landed on page 70 and 71 where an englishified list of places you can NOT carry is as follows: (none of these are required to post "the sign")

anywhere that makes over half of it's money from alcohol sales
in a correctional facility
on the property of a school or educational facility
polling place while voting is taking place
in any gov't court or office
at a racetrack
the secured area of an airport
a hospitle
a nursing home
anywhere where a high school, college, or professional sporting event is taking place
in a "permanent" ammusement park
on the premises of a church or other religious place
at any government meeting

and in addition, employers can outlaw firearms for their employes without being required to post a sign (other people entering that facility would be allowed to carry assuming the sign was not in place). Interestingly enough though banks are not on the list, and if you go to the capitol in Austin it's like an express pass if you have your CHL... So I was thinking, in my normal day, how often could I carry (assuming i kept it on me all day so I didn't have to lock it up in my car at any point). So, on Sunday's I go to church, so that's out. If I go to work at my normal job it's technically a gov't facility. I go to college a few days a week, so that's out. And now what's left is... nothing.
Ok, so that didn't work very well, what if I do lock up my weapon in my vehicle. Well, I still can't carry in any of those places, at least I have it in my car... I'm sure that won't be awkward putting on and taking off every time I get in or out of my car. I can carry it in my house, but I wouldn't need a license to do that anyways...
Hmmm, so it looks like the only time I can carry is when I go out to eat and the movies, assuming I don't go to a bar. Well, at least I'll stay safe on dates I go on;-)

As a side note, I did run across one website I wanted to share regarding allowing CHL's to carry on college and university campuses. The website is www.concealedcampus.org

That's my thought's for today,
-Steven

30 days episode 3

2012-01-06T13:03:00.000-06:00

I'm writing this a day late cause last night I ended up getting sick and wasn't done testing stuff at my job till nearly midnight. So, I'm sorry that my consistency is rather lacking. But as I recall I promised some pics and stuff so enjoy!!

This is my flyer I made up to give to distributors. All the drawings are from Google Sketchup.

So, in case you've never seen one of these, you open it up and slide the "forks" under the bottom of the case...

... roll it upright, drop down the legs in the back so it can't accidentally roll back over. remove the lid, and you're ready to mix!
Leave me a comment and et me know what you think of the stands. Anything you would like to see me build? let me know and I just might do it.

So, I'm sure you are wanting to know who my distributor is,

The Audio Dawg:

Michael "Spunky" Brunone

400 E. Royal Lane, suite 230

3 Dallas Communications Complex

Irving, TX 75039

972-759-1131

spunky@theaudiodawg.com

www.theaudiodawg.com

He carries all sorts of recording stuff, so if you're trying to buy stuff for a home studio (or if you wanna buy my simple tilt) give him a shout.

Also, today I updated my website, put out some pics of the stand and a new contact page.

www.entertainmentfabrication.com

That's all for today, I'll talk to you all soon

2012-01-04T21:55:00.000-06:00

So, re-wiring a rack... it's what I love about this industry... there is always room to improve upon an older design or method. But it seems like no matter how well you plan a project, there is always something that comes up unexpected. I couldn't really risk that though since we have nearly daily shows in all our rooms. Fortunately I was able to schedule during a few days off to hook up a set of splits on stage for a monitor console, since this will save us a ton of money on our shows and be a great service we can now offer...

so it started with chasing down conduits, pulling of tons of covers on junction boxes, thinking, writing out how things were currently wired, and then thinking some more. The problem was that since panels had already been moved around once, the numbers didn't match up, and some of the higher numbered lines had been removed and re-purposed. So I kinda had to work backwards through history and then rewrite it...

I'm pretty sure whoever installed this last though thought it was called "service slack" not a "service loop". Between jumps and extensions on terminal blocks and cables that were a lot more tangled than I thought, it took a whole day on just one rack, and I got 2 more.

But fortunately on this one I mainly just had to rip stuff out of it.

Here are some of the final documents that I generated to reference wires, since not all of them were numbered I had to also write down the color combinations, in case I needed to remove more than planed to re-pull wire through a conduit or something.

and that's all for today... Tomorrow I will be taking a prototype console stand to a distributor to see if they want to carry it. Hopefully all goes well and is worth my driving all over town. I'll post the press kit and whatnot tomorrow.
But until then,
-Steven A.

2012-01-02T15:55:00.000-06:00

So, today marks way too long since I've last blogged, too much has happened to catch up, so I'm just gonna pick up for 2012. I have made a new years non-resolution to blog for 30 days about the interesting stuff that happens. And assuming I remember to take pics and stuff I have some cool stuff planned for this month.

Tomorrow I start rewiring several thousand wires in a rack. Hopefully at some point we're gonna weld some stuff on my friends car for storm chasing. Cut down some trees and prep land for shipping crates talk about some guns and stuff and hopefully build some fun targets to shoot, maybe even finally get around finally recording a song I wrote a little while back.
So, anyways, stay tuned, leave me comments of what you think of my work, and I'll be back soon.
-Steven

watching paint dry

2009-11-12T19:27:00.000-06:00

So, today i get to do just that, watch paint dry. giving it about 90 minutes to dry, and 2 coats of paint on both sides, there goes 6 hours, just enough time left to haul it back up to the church and lay it out..
now a before and after pic.

c u tomorrow,

a day to weld

2009-11-11T00:29:00.000-06:00

so, todays task, finish welding all the brackets, weld the truss, and try not to scare any of my new neighbors. I finally got settled enough to wrk in my garage, although it is still a long way from where I want it...

a couple random photos here, first, a shot of my band saw set up to cut angles on all the tubing... you can see most of one of the stick all jigged together.

a bucket full of scraps... yay...

on the last one here, the 2 others are hanging up on the shelf. I should put here a link to watch me weld the last one together, it is time lapse, so don't worry, you wont spend 30 minutes watching it. VIDEO

here it is all put together, running from my garage out past my car! yeah, total coolness;)

and now it's time to get ready for tomorrow, seeing it all come together is making me excited tho, I can't wait to install it.

a real machine shop

2009-10-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

well, today I get to go to one of my friends machine shops. My mill isn't working very well, and they have EVERYTHING at his place...
the brackets are to hold some custom truss under the soffit for projectors. but of course as things always happen, I had to change my design last minute because the tubing I had to end up buying for the truss was a tad smaller then planned for. not much to say other then I learned what NOT to do on a mill...

everything in the back of my car, ready to go about 30 miles south to build stuff. and no, the electrical cable isn't for the brackets, its to wire up my new garage!

yes! now this is a mill!

ok, no, Those are mills!!!

finished holes, need to finish welding them and give them the infamous black paint.

alright, now to get ready to move on sunday!

2009-10-29T21:57:00.000-05:00

So, today I get to tear out the floor in the soffit over the stage, it is 2 layers of .75" plywood. Im hoping that all the beams are where I think they are. I measured everything as best I could with the floor still down. I have to line up 4 clamps in a perfect straight line, but there is no way to hit it all with a laser or anything like that. well, I guess I could, but it would require I do a lot more demolition, and the plan it to put it back like nothing happened...

so here is a really crappy shot from inside. i will have to move the subs to pull out the floor, and since it will probably take me 2 weeks, I don't want to put them out of opperation, so I rigged them together real quick and picked them up about 18" so I could work underneath. I'll have to finish this project before I can hang truss now, cause I m using my chain motor...

and here is the floor removed. good and bad news tho, the beams are spaced exactly where I thought they would be, but there isnt any clearence to attach clamps, so I will spend my time till install it working out a new solution...

these are little "shelves" on the side, they are actually covering C beams that are for the goofy little wings on the side. but I have to take the top off and then cut through the wall and attach the clamp in there...

here is the other side already done, you can see what I'm talking about now, just really hard to tel what exactly is what in the picture...

well, I'm done for the day. I figured I'd put up some more of my Danger signs across the catwalk where I was working so nobody would step through and fall to the ground.

Well there was one piece of plywood that I couldn't get up but other then that it went well. I will have to come back with a crowbar or something and just rip it, cause i think some of the screws heads broke off...

exhausted and filthy- gonna go home and clean up.

cleaning off the stage

2009-10-28T00:23:00.000-05:00

today's task, get rid of the old set. it came down really fast, and I was able to get a little ahead of schedule. the old projector mount was a pain to dissassemble, and the new one prolly won't be any easier to put up, but it'll be way more flexible.

pretty much everything is lowered in this shot. nice view of the battens (i built those out of spare parts and stuff, they are pretty slick)

lots of black squares... the 3rd (smallest) one is a sand bag that is keeping cables tight. that is on a third batten that is going to hold a new screen. there is also a pile of chairs on the front of the stage- there Las Colinas symphony was in here yesterday...

here is a nice shot that shows it pretty much empty, see the 3 projectors under the soffit? those are right at the edge of the stage, you actually have to put the genie on the first step to be out far enough to unhook it all...

2 of the 3 are down. and no, those long pieces of unistrut are not the only thing that was holding it up,

check out those screen frames, those were a custom job I did, I didn't want to spend the whole budget on fast fold screens or something, so I welded some tubing and laced on some fabric... they are going to be used again but a little different;)

and christmas has begun

2009-10-22T19:00:00.000-05:00

YAY! Christmas! I love this time of the year, and best of all I get to build a new set to install in the church. so let's see, I've been finishing the whole schedule of when everything needs to be built or installed, it looks like it should work, we'll see.
today's project was to build some brackets that are going to hold a custom piece of truss. they were supposed to be easy, but me not watching carefully as i was cutting, i messed up some of the pieces, i'll explain later.

these actually are not the ones that got messed up, even though it looks crazy, just cutting 4 pieces at once

here is one of the pics of my "shop" i converted the dining room in my apt. it works pretty good though.

here is the other half. as you can tell it is crowded but it feels kinda like a cockpit, tight, but everything is just in reach.

well, I was hoping to cut some of the stuff ith this old plasma cutter, but it didn't wanna work.

so here is my "let me put half a dozen clamps on it so that i can try to fix my mess up" but i didn't like that solution. so I figured I'd call it a day and figure out the solution while watching some cartoons!!

let's see what's inside...

2009-10-07T00:06:00.000-05:00

well, I guess i never mentioned what the speakers are, that might be useful, each side has an array of 10 dvdosc elements. they are wired in 3's with the top on it's own amp. but I think I want to change it so that it's 2,2,3,3. that way I can adjust the top 2 (the only ones throwing all the way t the back) and add a little more HF, it sounds a little dull in the top of the terrace when I was up there the other day.
anyways, I opened up each speaker, pulled out the horn cleaned them all and then ran tone and pink noise through them, i logged the graph of each one with their serial #'s so i can go back every year and see how they are performing... i found one of the mid range drivers was loose, and there was a lot of paint chips and hairs(or threads) inside, but other than that, they were in pretty good shape.

here i am making sure that the amp i am testing with is set to the right max voltage and polarity...

i put the measurement mic touching the ground to eliminate reflections.

lookin' at the screen, having no idea if what i was seeing was proper or not. it all ended up being slightly more of a comparison of all the speakers to each other, not really to what they were necessarily supposed to be. :(

the back panel comes off and then 4 hex screws take the back of the horn off, unfortunately, if you want to put it back together you have to torque it to a specific ft. lb. so i got to buy a $50 screwdriver just for that...

and finally i'm done, with one side, luckily i wrote down their order so it will go back together with no issues.

repairing line arrays

2009-10-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

So I figured since I had some free time before I started full scale into christmas set up at the church, I would take some time to pull the main line arrays down, gut them clean them up, and make sure everything was in top working order before the holiday season rolled around. so yesterday after all of our sunday services, me and FOH engineer Frankie pulled the house left side down, i'll service this one this week and next sunday pull down the other side. hopefully i don't find much wrong:)

here is some of the rigging above the array before the motor was hung.

a view from up top, right here it is about 45' off the ground. the blue rope is for me, the white for guiding the line.

once it cleared the soffit i could repel down to it and unhook all the wires off the back.

and touchdown!

not the room looks like a kids mouth after they lost a tooth!