Custom Scroller Gelstrings
- Thread starteramandaverhagen
- Start date
This is not what you want to hear... but...
Email the list of colors to Apollo (does not have to be Apollo colors) and have them make it for you for 50 bucks a piece.
Making your own scrolls is not fun, especially on the newer scrollers that are not spring tensioned. The tolerances are just to small to make your own and have them hold up.
Yes, you can do it, but your going to hate yourself during the process and even more when you go to cue in the show.
Email the list of colors to Apollo (does not have to be Apollo colors) and have them make it for you for 50 bucks a piece.
Making your own scrolls is not fun, especially on the newer scrollers that are not spring tensioned. The tolerances are just to small to make your own and have them hold up.
Yes, you can do it, but your going to hate yourself during the process and even more when you go to cue in the show.
Yeah, don't.
Follow Footer's advice.
Also do a search on the subject to hear horror stories and and all the reasons why you want someone else to do it.
Hi Amandaverhagen,
The Apollo SmartColor scrollers work well with custom and stock gel strings made of good quality gel. As you've heard from several scroller users, it is totally possible to make them on your own but the strings must be made 'dead straight' with frame sizes per the manual.
This advice really isn't any different than when building strings for any other color scroller, but the Smart Color uses two motors to eliminate the noise produced by the spring tensioning. If/when the gel string is made without an accurate straight edge of say, 5 feet to eliminate crookedness, the string will wander and lose accuracy.
By no means am I dissuading you from making these on your own. If you do, PLEASE pay close attention to:
a) Squareness of cut (width and length)
b) Straightness of taping the frames together
c) Heat resistant gel tape that is NOT stretched tightly when applied to gel frame joints
d) Overall string length
Thank you for using the Apollo Smart Color, we certainly appreciate your trusting the Apollo product line with an important production!
The Apollo SmartColor scrollers work well with custom and stock gel strings made of good quality gel. As you've heard from several scroller users, it is totally possible to make them on your own but the strings must be made 'dead straight' with frame sizes per the manual.
This advice really isn't any different than when building strings for any other color scroller, but the Smart Color uses two motors to eliminate the noise produced by the spring tensioning. If/when the gel string is made without an accurate straight edge of say, 5 feet to eliminate crookedness, the string will wander and lose accuracy.
By no means am I dissuading you from making these on your own. If you do, PLEASE pay close attention to:
a) Squareness of cut (width and length)
b) Straightness of taping the frames together
c) Heat resistant gel tape that is NOT stretched tightly when applied to gel frame joints
d) Overall string length
Thank you for using the Apollo Smart Color, we certainly appreciate your trusting the Apollo product line with an important production!
shiben
Well-Known Member
I tried to do this once, to put some less saturated colors in my scroller. Took maybe 20 min before I said **** it and hung more lights. Its hard to get that many straight cuts without stress unless you have a CNC knife (actually have used one of these, a guy I know has one to cut out custom decals for his model railroad, its super cool, but he might have built it himself). If you can pay someone else to do it (especially a company that makes them, like Apollo), its worth the cost, because its just a pain in the rear. It is possible, but hard as hell to do.
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If you follow Keith's advice, your custom strings will work great. I've had to build 10 custom strings for a show earlier this semester and another 10 for my thesis show.
If I had the budget, I would have had them made for me though. It is extremely time intensive. Even with our assembly line that we had going, it took us at least 3-4 hours each time. As was mentioned, attention to detail is a must, as is the gel tape. I sure would have liked using that time for other notes though.
Even with all of that detail, it doesn't even compare to the custom strings that Apollo produces. We have some stock Apollo strings as well as some custom strings from Apollo. Apollo's appear to be seamless in comparison to our shop made strings. One of my favorite scroller tricks, when using a well laid out gel string, is splitting frames. I like to think of it ironically as a poor mans colorizer that works on Fresnels. Even though we are using gel tape, the tape itself is MUCH more visiable on our strings in comparison to the ones from Apollo.
If I had the budget, I would have had them made for me though. It is extremely time intensive. Even with our assembly line that we had going, it took us at least 3-4 hours each time. As was mentioned, attention to detail is a must, as is the gel tape. I sure would have liked using that time for other notes though.
Even with all of that detail, it doesn't even compare to the custom strings that Apollo produces. We have some stock Apollo strings as well as some custom strings from Apollo. Apollo's appear to be seamless in comparison to our shop made strings. One of my favorite scroller tricks, when using a well laid out gel string, is splitting frames. I like to think of it ironically as a poor mans colorizer that works on Fresnels. Even though we are using gel tape, the tape itself is MUCH more visiable on our strings in comparison to the ones from Apollo.
This brings up the infamous pyramid. Always remember you can only have two of the following 3:
1. Fast
2. Cheap
3. Quality
