Equipment Maintenance on a Tight Schedule

[cdub260]

I recently came across a reply to a post in the What Went Wrong? section that absolutely infuriated me. A tech was commenting that he hadn't cleaned the glass from a shattered lamp out of an instrument because he didn't have the time. Instead the light was retired. I thought about responding, but decided that the Lighting section was a more appropriate forum for this post.

No one has the time for equipment maintenance. It's something for which you have to make the time. I know perfectly well that there are very few venues that can afford to shut down for a month or two just to clean their lights. Well guess what boys and girls, you don't have to.

I have somewhere in the vicinity of 200 lights, and perhaps 30 pieces of effects equipment in my inventory. Every light, and those pieces of effects equipment that will be needed that season get a complete tear down and cleaning every year. Collectively that is a considerable investment of time and effort. However, I don't do it all at once. I spread my maintenance out over the course of a year. When I have a day where I have nothing else to do, or if I need to kill an hour or two, I will work on the tedious and boring job of equipment maintenance.

How am I able to keep track of what has and has not been maintained? Well, this is where meticulous record keeping comes into play. Every piece of equipment in my inventory is tagged with a unique inventory number. By using the inventory number and equipment type to identify each light, I am able to keep a maintenance log, a record of what was done to the light and when. I use a simple Excel spreadsheet as my maintenance log, but a yellow legal pad would work just as well. It would just take longer to enter the information as you can't copy and paste. My major divisions are between lights and effects equipment, but within these categories, my logs include the following information: Equipment Type, Inventory Number, Date of Service, Model Number, Serial Number, Date of Manufacture, Description of Service, and Notes. Granted, not all of this information is applicable t every piece of equipment. For instance, most of my lights have neither a model number nor a serial number. That column just gets N/A for it's entry.

Most of you are probably thinking that having to look up a light in your log to see if you've already maintained it can become a tedious and cumbersome task. Well, you're right! That's why I use various maintenance labels which I initial and date, so now all I have to to is check the yoke of the light where I put my labels to see when it was last serviced. The labels I use are Maintenance, Inspected, Tested, Repaired and Rejected. I know of three different suppliers I can use to get these labels, Grainger, McMaster-Carr, and Seton. I don't advise using Seton. They'll send you three catalogues a month for the rest of your life. It gets really irritating after a while, although it is kind of amusing that they've spent more on postage for their catalogues than I've spent with them in the last 5 years. I'm sure there are other suppliers out there that I'm not aware of.

This may all seem like a long drawn out process and an awful lot of paper work to clean a few lousy lights, but it adds maybe a minute to the maintenance of each piece of equipment, and allows you to spread your maintenance out over the entire length of your operating season. Additionally, it provides you with a paper trail on your equipment maintenance, so that should there be an incident involving one of your lights, when the powers that be ask "Why wasn't this light properly maintained?", you can look it up in your log and say "I did this, this, and this on this date." After all, we could all use a little CYA insurance.

I guess the main point I'm making here is that there is no excuse for neglecting proper equipment maintenance. "I don't have the time." doesn't hold water with me, and you can bet that when something happens and OSHA comes knocking, it will hold even less water with them.

[JD]

Humm.. Back when I had a ton of stuff (before PCs) I used a somewhat simpler system. About once every three months or so, we would do a maintenance day. The fixtures we did would get a spot of paint on the yoke. (Red= spring, blue= summer, yellow = fall, etc.) In addition, we would sharpie the bulb dates on the bases of the lamps. At a glance, you would know which fixtures were done when.

[Charc]

I know of a theater (not mine, though it does too) that needs to seriously take a look at maintaing its lights. Sure, everything has all the parts, but in terms of cleaning the lenses and reflectors... It is quite a tedious process though, and unless it's an annual thing, it really does require a fair bit of paperwork.

Just checking to make sure I'm not crazy:

Use Iso on everything, never us Ammonia?

[MNicolai]

At one theatre I work at, we shut down for a week every 6 months to do inventory, equipment maintenance, facility work, an entire sweep of the building to replace dead bulbs, lamps, and ballasts, touch-up paint on the walls, repaint the stage floor, etc, etc.

That's easy to do when you have 5-8 people working 10a-7p each day, but at a nearby school, I did not get so lucky. I've been in charge of single-handedly moving all of the equipment out of the old auditorium, preparing it for the new arts center, and taking care of the years of neglect the equipment has seen. Between moving an maintenance, I've been busy at work on average 8a-3p, 4-5 days a week, since early June. The worst part is motivating yourself as the more monotonous tasks are the only ones left, and I've found that if I crank some music, and establish a goal each day, that works really well to keep me moving. Hardly a tight schedule, but it passes the time while I'm in the building anyways meeting with electricians, dealers, interior designers, and administrators to keep the renovation of one of our spaces moving along.

If you clean your reflectors, bake your cables, and vacuum your dimmer racks regularily, it will make your life much easier.

[cdub260]

Originally Posted by charcoaldabs

I know of a theater (not mine, though it does too) that needs to seriously take a look at maintaing its lights. Sure, everything has all the parts, but in terms of cleaning the lenses and reflectors... It is quite a tedious process though, and unless it's an annual thing, it really does require a fair bit of paperwork.

Just checking to make sure I'm not crazy:

Use Iso on everything, never us Ammonia?

I do use Iso to clean my lenses and reflectors. I also use lint free rags. It makes my life a bit easier.

[cdub260]

Originally Posted by MNicolai

At one theatre I work at, we shut down for a week every 6 months to do inventory, equipment maintenance, facility work, an entire sweep of the building to replace dead bulbs, lamps, and ballasts, touch-up paint on the walls, repaint the stage floor, etc, etc.

That's easy to do when you have 5-8 people working 10a-7p each day, but at a nearby school, I did not get so lucky. I've been in charge of single-handedly moving all of the equipment out of the old auditorium, preparing it for the new arts center, and taking care of the years of neglect the equipment has seen. Between moving an maintenance, I've been busy at work on average 8a-3p, 4-5 days a week, since early June. The worst part is motivating yourself as the more monotonous tasks are the only ones left, and I've found that if I crank some music, and establish a goal each day, that works really well to keep me moving. Hardly a tight schedule, but it passes the time while I'm in the building anyways meeting with electricians, dealers, interior designers, and administrators to keep the renovation of one of our spaces moving along.

If you clean your reflectors, bake your cables, and vacuum your dimmer racks regularily, it will make your life much easier.

As a matter of fact my crew consists of 3 people: Me, Myself, and I.

Usually, if I need a hand with something I can grab someone from our shop staff, but as their knowledge of lighting and electrical is somewhat lacking, I end up doing most of the work myself.

[Sayen]

Originally Posted by MNicolai

That's easy to do when you have 5-8 people working 10a-7p each day, but at a nearby school, I did not get so lucky.


If you clean your reflectors, bake your cables, and vacuum your dimmer racks regularily, it will make your life much easier.

Working at a school, with a volunteer staff, I've been trying to get in the habit of not letting equipment sit when it does need repair, but rather addressing it right away. I lose the occasional lunch, but it keeps a backlog from building up.

Bake your cables? I'm not familiar with that one.

[MNicolai]

See http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/s...bles.html]here

Helps keep the cables neat and untangled. Doesn't do much for cables that have been terribly abused already though.

[ship]

Here here on your ideas much less Seton in catalogs - constantly irritating with them and others. For the paper and postage perhaps they wouldn’t need to change prices on at most only a few items more frequently - much less cost as many trees/gas etc.

You have a similar concept in program to what I track moving light lamps with in a return of like at least $20K if not $60K a year in lamp returns for. All by way of tracking the stuff and people that change lamps just filling out five lines of info about this lamp change. In addition to this, even yesterday in seeing two lamps in a row that seemed like inner globe micro crack failure yet associated with the same fixture within the same one-off production I was instead able to associate the failed lamps with a bad lighting fixture in some way. Given this I was able to call that fixture for service call and it even having passed inspection will be re-pulled and further analized.

Well done, well on the way to a PATT test as I understand it and all ways of managing your equipment. Most should take note of what you have and are able to do - it’s their job also to properly manage the gear they are charged with.
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Really good solution for a static install installation. For us, each fixture is inspected before each show and bench focused. Anything that needs work following the inspection gets rejected and another fixture replaces it. Following that, where there is time any fixtures rejected get all care they need. Very different situation on amount of gear and or care given to them - this also granted many fixtures can be out months or even over a year with only lamp changes done to them thus every time it gets prepped for a show all care and cleaning is done no matter if only last time on a few hours or out say at this point for one show almost a year now.

[Sayen]

Originally Posted by MNicolai

See http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/s...bles.html]here

Helps keep the cables neat and untangled. Doesn't do much for cables that have been terribly abused already though.

Thanks, just hadn't heard that term. Saving cables falls under preventative maintenance, of beating it into your crew the proper way to coil and handle cables.