Label for lights on battens

jaspholm

New Member
Hello,

We are working on a complete overhaul of our lighting system in the coming year and are wanting to place permanent label on our house electrics. We are wanting to include fixture type DMX address CH# and likely which circuit they will be in. We have used gaff in the past but that fades overtime. My thoughts were to go for a label maker but most out there are worse then gaff. If anyone has any thoughts I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.
 
Sounds like you're making a yoke label that will go on the batten rather than the yoke. Search for previous information on yoke label.

How yoke labels are made by many in the industry:
1. 6"-ish strip of 2" black gaffers tape. Insures clean, easy removal at end of run. Allows positioning if removed and re-applied with care.
2. Avery label (adhesive label)* of appropriate to you size and shape. One dimension (usually height) less than 1/2" or so than 2".
3. Cover with 2" clear cello tape (packing tape).
*Since you are covering the whole thing with cello, you'll likely find the adhesive label is not totally necessary. You can print on plain paper, but must take some care to make the sizes and shapes uniform. Export data from LightWright to MSWord or other label printing software.

When laying out the information on the label, take some consideration as to what's most important, and what's secondary or tertiary. "Channel" should probably be first, "where it gets power from" probably last. "Type of fixture" (and if applicable, "Mode") totally forgotten about once unit is hung.
 
We used a rep plot that was in the air 99% of the time and toyed with the idea of a permanent pipe length hang card system, finally gave up. Beat solution seemed to be 3" webbing with labels on it. Problem 1 was if the hang changed, the card was then useless and needed to be removed else confusion reigned. I then just made up hang cards on an 11x17 half page print out as created in Vectoworks that I tape on the electric as needed and would get used if we were restoring back to rep from a change. If I had 2 electricians hanging a pipe, easy to print 2 copies, one per electrician, to reference as to where things were going. The hang card had distance from C/L, type, focus direction, dimmer or address, power outlet, color if applicable, etc......
 
Yes i am basically making a yoke label for the batten. It would be nice to just print it and slap it on even with extra tape. The issue of moving fixtures is always there. We say that people cant adjust the house plot, but really its more like guide lines. I think the idea of something like a hang card makes the most logic. Some document that only has the parts people need for a rehang. I appreciate the thoughts from both of yall.
 
I used VW as well as Lightwright for paperwork. Beceause it was a rep plot, I had the basic paperwork saved to re-use. It was easy to just print. The hang cards were a separate VW file that synced with LW, I could easily make adjustments if needed and run a print. When we were using the plot for an event, I loaded color by running up a system channel (all the R34's on side light), the electricians would just grab pre-sported color on a work table and load color for the units glowing at 50%. They didn't need paperwork for this.

Think about do you need the rep info for every light pasted to the pipe ?. Once the gear is up and working, it stays put and all the info is on your plot. VW and LW were required for this all to work, (Mrs. Footer here uses WYSIWYG, I think, does the same as VW and LW).
 
I was wondering if there was a "best of all worlds" solution in hang tapes for each batten with the yoke labels taped on that. Normally a hang tape is removed just before/after focus, but there's not much wrong with leaving it there. But if hanging a completely different plot, yet knowing you're going to restore to the current one, one doesn't want "wrong" labels floating around.


Some definitions before we get too far off in the woods...
A hang tape is 3" jute webbing or drywall tape or adding machine or police caution tape with printed labels affixed or just the most pertinent information written with a sharpie.
A hang card is a 1/2" scale portion of the light plot containing just the current location and mounted on cardboard.
A focus tape is just two oversized tape measures (SR-SL & US-DS) so one can see dimensions while standing to know where to stand during focus.
A focus cloth is a full stage groundcloth that has outlines of beams or beam centers to enable the plot to be focussed with all battens 4-5' off the ground.
 
For our rep plot we have all the info on a patch sheet with pipe measurements from the CL of the bar. -for OP +for PS. We then label the fixtures with numbers and address.
Works for us.
Regards
Geoff
 
So we do exactly this. Every fixture in our venue has a 2x3 label on the raceway with all this info. We're also a place that we zip tie cabling to the pipe for our rep plot. Makes it really easy to restore on the off chance that we have to move stuff. Our labels contain unit number, position, dimmer number, circuit number (yes... we still have a hard patch....), channel, rep color, and purpose. I print them on my thermal label printer via "mail merge" in word based on an excel export of LW.
 
When we were hanging new shows in our new smaller prosc. theater, that had an extensive LED inventory, we used the label creator in Lightwright to print 2x3 Avery labels that we placed on the instrument yoke. Had pipe designation and distance from C/L as well as power and address info., unit type, etc...Lightwight has a great system for creating these labels, once you learn it.
 

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