:O custom connectors for
power, I wouldn't go near those except with a wooden stick! I've heard too many stories even with just
Edison. on 20amp
I'm thinking:
L5-20 for 120 and L6-20 for 240, Cams for 3phase to the
dimmer from the
company switch, and socas with True1 and Twist fan-outs. No
stage pin here. (I know the majority here love it, but I don't like pin splitting). But seriously, that's not the reason we're not doing
stage pin, it's just that every
circuit in the building is L5-20.
We have some monitors
in one of our extended venues that is L21-30, in the same
venue we have CM Lodestars (permanent - side note I know this isn't ideal and they always recommend dead hanging motors, but this was installed before I got here and they dont want to change it) on L5-20. Earlier it was said to go L21-30 for these? Should I change them to that or find another Twist so we don't confuse the monitors with the motor
power?
@IanTech @Jay Ashworth (and @ those playing along at home.)
The six slots in the finished surface of 'Tommy's' show
deck spanned approximately 60 feet by 7/8" wide. The six gaps had to be as narrow as possible to accommodate dancers and non-automated rolling
props. On our side of the pond, a 12
circuit 20 amp 120 volt
connector would be a 37 contact
Pyle-National. A 6
circuit 20 amp 120 volt
connector would be a
Socapex,
Veam or compatible.
For Tommy Germany we had to accommodate a combination of 120 volt and 230 volt 20 amp circuits. The plugs could be any length parallel to the direction of travel but needed to fit within the 7/8" gap with clearance. We looked at Amphenol,
Cannon, ELCO /EDAC and others before giving up and designing / fabricating our own prototype to
send to TUV for testing. TUV had a multitude of queries but neither the
German producer, nor any of the three shops he was considering using, had anything better to offer which fulfilled all of the requirements.
Additional considerations:
The un-mated female connectors could NOT protrude above the surface of the finished show
deck; being recessed 1/4" was desirable.
Due to the
blocking of the performances, it had to be possible to traverse any / all of the six mice the full 60' travel of the tracks
WITHOUT causing any problems for any / all non-automated
props and / or singing and dancing performers. Since the
German production's final
blocking was months from being finalized we chose to
wire all six tracks for 12 circuits.
The mating male connectors carried 1 to 12 grounded circuits, needed to be
polarized plus quick and convenient to mate and unplug during the frenzied / break-neck pace of the productions, rehearsals and performances.
Fabricating the male connectors only large enough to carry as many circuits as required by any particular electrified prop' was another serious plus from the perspective of manufacturing costs, machining time, physical size, weight, mating / un-mating speed / force required and ULTRA-STURDY cable clamps.
All of the above requirements
led to our decision to design / fabricate our own connectors then have TUV run their gamut of tests.
The actual pin and sleeve contacts were purchased in bulk from Pin-Tech, an established U.S. company who were somewhat amused and confused by our order for FAR more male pins and comparatively few female sockets. This was early in 1995. Pin-Tech had no problem remembering us when when duplicated our order for London, England in 1996, nope, barely blinked at our second order.
That's my saga of the custom built 12
circuit connectors and I'm sticking to it.
Epilogue: Part one; The
German producer had three different shops bidding to supply the dimmers and lighting. All three shops utilized the same 6
circuit connectors BUT all three shops wired their connectors differently and incompatibly. Imagine if all North American shops used
Socapex /
VEAM but each used different / electrically incompatible pin-outs. Due to the trans-ocean shipping time, we had to ship all of our
track circuits sans mating connectors as the
German producer hadn't decided on his supplier thus their required mating pin-outs.
Bummer but we did our best.
Epilogue: Part two; 'Tommy's' North American
lighting designer and his associates designed their production to run on an
ETC (what the heck was
ETC's LP90 killer called, my memory's failing me at the moment?) [ The ETC Obsession! (thank you Google!)] and 440+ dimmers of two wattages. Many of their lighting fixtures of choice were only available for 120 volt operation. In North America we'd expect to find a few 48 or 96
dimmer touring racks.
NOPE! That'd be too easy. When the
German producer, who normally produced touring rock concerts, finally decided upon his supplier of choice imagine our surprise at finding a small mountain of battle encased 6 and 12
dimmer packs waiting in the DSR
dimmer room.
The surprises weren't over yet. The dimmers were the rental company's own design. They were nice enough in a rock 'n
roll / Friday night bar band sort of way but their way of dealing with 120 volt filaments was
"interesting" to be polite.
Each of the mountain of
dimmer packs bore a four position rotary selector
switch clearly labelled
"230 volt rock", "
230 volt theatre", "
120 volt rock" and
"120 volt theatre". The dimmers were based on dual
SCR's, who knew about
IGBT's in 1995
?
When the "
Voltage selector
switch" was set for:
"230 volt rock" each pack put out
line voltage with rapid response time.
"230 volt theatre" put out
line voltage with a slower, ramped, response time.
The serious filament killer was:
"120 volt rock" put out 230 volt with the first half of each
sine wave delayed to read 120
RMS on your trusty Fluke
RMS meter.
"120 volt theatre" similarly triggered 120 volts
RMS with a delayed response time.
The show's lighting designers were livid but their protests fell on deaf ears; possibly deafened by too many weekends in
German beer gardens.
120 volt filaments had radically shortened life spans and died spectacularly, especially during the show's many driving rock numbers.
Tommy Germany was fun times. Tommy London was so much more civilized but my associates complained loud and long about the Brit's warm beer and unbending last calls. At least the
German's knew how to serve cold beer 'till sunrise.
Epilogue: Part three; each of the small mountain of gleaming, newly built, custom
dimmer packs had a two pole
GFI main
breaker and the packs were sourced to approximately equally load the three phases.
Oh how
fast those
GFI's tripped if / when the designers ran chases spread across multiple packs with a given
chase pulling
power partially from one pack and partially from a different pack or two.
Associate LD Dave Grill had appreciably less hair by the time we hit opening night.
EDIT 1: Added an inadvertently omitted comma.
EDIT 2: Added name of
ETC's Obsession
console (Thank you Google!)
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard