Vintage Lighting Help with old Altman R40 Border Light Roundel Frames

[whitsonta]

Hello!

I recently took over as the auditorium manager for the middle school I work at that has been neglected for years. The building was originally the high school and built in 1950. Through my research I've discovered that the stage lights are Altman Border Lights, type 528.

They use the color roundels and a metal retaining ring that holds them to the housing. There are a bunch that don't have any clear roundels on them and that I can't find anywhere. We're short by at least 15. The system was put in by Lehigh in Allentown pa. I reached out to them and they called Altman and apparently it's a very old version of that light and they don't have any in storage or anything.

My question is, is there a similar thing that would hold the roundel in? The rectangle enclosure might work but they're getting hard to find too. Attached is a picture of the ring and the lights in action. When I first took over they only had red, white and blue as color options. I found enough green roundels, took out half the red and added greens.

Thanks!
Travis

 

[JohnD]

It's of no help, but the Altman 528 isn't the same thing as the R40 borderlight. The R40 is still in production and uses R or PAR lamps with built in reflectors. The now discontinued 528 used a standard A type lamp which screwed into an Alzak reflector. There was also the 520 borderlight which used a smaller roundel (4.5 inch I think). Your best hope is finding someone who is getting rid of theirs. Some do show up on Ebay from time to time but most just end up in landfill.

 

[whitsonta]

It's of no help, but the Altman 528 isn't the same thing as the R40 borderlight. The R40 is still in production and uses R or PAR lamps with built in reflectors. The now discontinued 528 used a standard A type lamp which screwed into an Alzak reflector. There was also the 520 borderlight which used a smaller roundel (4.5 inch I think). Your best hope is finding someone who is getting rid of theirs. Some do show up on Ebay from time to time but most just end up in landfill.

That makes sense, and does help. I've been trying to get info together and put in in a binder of what's what. We have a set of R40's with the floor trunnion's and got the 2 mixed up. I thought the hanging ones were R40's till I got up on the lift and saw a tag that said Cat No 528 Border Light.

 

[SteveB]

Maybe buy PAR 38 flood lamps in red, blue and green ?

http://www.homedepot.com/s/Par38%20green?NCNI-5

Or if dimming them isn’t crucial, they make LED versions.

http://www.homedepot.com/s/Par38%20flood%20blue?NCNI-5

 

[Les]

I would not be surprised if a sheet metal shop could run those off for you. Might be worth some additional research.

Be thankful that your strips don't use spring rings. I had a set of strips years back that used retaining rings similar to the ones pictured below, and I needed like 40 of them. Altman sold them for $10 each, but that's a lot to pay when you need so many. I took one to a custom spring manufacturer and when asked about pricing they said I probably didn't want to know. I think it was $25 ea or something like that.

The ones I needed had some additional bends along the arc that helped clip the roundel in place.

 

[ship]

Hand bent rings are cheaper than bought ones for unique stuff with practice in bending them.

I don't know of these rings used.

Was thinking silicone gasket types shaped U-Shape which would fit into a gel fram slot to retain, but won't work in your case. These spring C-Rings are retaining a roundel on a R-40 lamp? Interesting.

 

[JohnA]

Neither a PAR38 nor an R40 lamp will fit this fixture. The bases are all E26, but the physical size of the 528 lamp holder will not accept these lamps. I have successfully used A23 or P25 lamps in them. These retaining rings are a huge pain--both in removal and reinsertion. It is a constant battle -- holding the roundel lens while trying to flex this retaining ring into place -- and not have mess fall to the floor.

 

[SteveB]

Neither a PAR38 nor an R40 lamp will fit this fixture. The bases are all E26, but the physical size of the 528 lamp holder will not accept these lamps. I have successfully used A23 or P25 lamps in them. These retaining rings are a huge pain--both in removal and reinsertion. It is a constant battle -- holding the roundel lens while trying to flex this retaining ring into place -- and not have mess fall to the floor.

I wonder if a Leviton medium screw base extender would work. Adds about $2.75 ea.

I’ve done this on fixtures that use a P necked lamp.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-Medium-Base-Socket-Extender-R52-02006-000/100356980

 

[Les]

It's a shame - a few years ago I recycled several dozen A-lamp strip reflectors that had hinged clasps rather than the bent ring design. The clasp worked marginally better (unless the reflector was bent ever so slightly out-of-round) and was at least self-contained. Hindsight...

 

[ship]

Sorry, I got confused in seeing R-40 and thinking this was the lamp type some how having a roundel mounted to it than thinking about the bad concept of a roundel spring clip mounted to a R-40 lamp.

Back on topic, it's amazing how a lamp socket extender will make a lamp socket designed for A-21 or A-23 and also with a Mog screw adaptor and lamp socket ectender how something globe will also become suitable to say G-30 lamps. The lamp socket extender was appairently engineered to be it's length instead of a random length. (A detail that might be a good term paper topic for research.)

In general from my experience, a strip designed for A-21/A-23 lamps will with lamp socket extenders fit a A-19 lamp properly. The roundel is a gel frame mounted thing and for it in most cases it was a sort of reversible gel frame assembly. Put it one way and it could mount the roundel flange, reverse it and it could accept gel. Kind of a brilliant concept. But for coloring A-Lamps.

Short look at Little Stage Lighting catalogue shows no above concept of mounting a roundel directly mounted to a PAR 38 lamp - tink I have seen this concept before in catalotue before, and it would be in this forum's Wikee catalogues. Though there were lots of sources for such stuff in the 60's and I do not doubt mounting a lens to a PAR 38 is viable as a concept.

Reason you don't have lens frames... why are you roundelling a clear lamp? The open slot for clear work light as it were is long held in not needing a roundel unless needing to spread the beam with an added lens. Lack of lenses to the clear lenses - but some extra bonus in having.

 

[RickR]

I hesitate to suggest a lamp much other than the intended one but;
Have you looked into PAR30 lamps? They are made in 'long neck' and 'short neck' varieties up to 75W. They have a good reflector and are halogen so are far brighter than one would expect.

 

[stagebuilder]

I was hired to clean up and do some maintenance at an elementary school in Marin Co, CA. The theater had two huge strip light I had never seen before, they are 24 cells, 3 circuits each with 8 cells per circuit. They had the same kind of roundel frame. The problem was if I used incandescents, the two strips would take up all of the dimmer capacities on the Lepercon tree dimmers. What I did was a bought a bunch of BR30 LED floods (Dimmable) from Costco, cost was about $3 a bulb. The length of the bulb neck was a tiny bit short so I reached in and bent the center tab up so it would make contact, obviously while the unit was plugged. Didn't take much to make it work. The LEDs of course do dim but they tend to pop on when first brought up, but they dim down relatively smooth. Since the heat is very negligible, so I taped primary gel squares over the circle frames. Also, since the bulb wattage is 10 watts, I was able to gang each strip's circuits onto the same dimmers without a load problem. Attached are pics of the strip units and the LED bulbs I purchased. I tried to upload a short vid showing up and down dimming, but I think CB doesn't allow vid uploads. The LED BR30s are a good way to go, especially if the strips are more utilitarian.