Re: Marking Lighting Instruments for Inventory
I've never felt the need to do this with conventionals. Unique serial numbers for moving lights? Sure, they have more parts that wear sooner and have manufacturer recommended maintenance schedules. It makes sense in Australia because they have mandated yearly testing. For me, trying to have unique numbers for a
stock of conventionals is just wasting time and creating more work. It's probably the kind of time waster I'd come up with if I had a cushy
house ME gig. If I had a huge
PRG sized inventory, then I would go to barcodes. Overall I just think it ends up working like the high school senior prank of getting 4 pigs, painting 1 2 4 & 5 on them, and letting them loose in the school. I'm satisfied just to have the owners name on the light, an accurate inventory count, barrels color coded by degree, and the
yoke labelled to indicate wattage.
With Source 4 Ellipsoidals, most of the time don't bother putting the degree on the body, just the
lens tube.
Lens tubes will get swapped and confusion will ensue. If you really must have the degree on the body, don't paint it on, use a label. I know some rental shops use the partitioned cases that don't let you see
barrel degree without pulling out the
instrument. In this case, a labelled
yoke makes sense, but again, the label should not be permanent.
For those older ellipsoidals that cannot swap barrels, its ok to label the
yoke with degree, but be aware that yokes sometimes do get swapped, and this can again lead to confusion.
On Source 4 PARs, don't bother putting the
lens spread on the body, lenses will get swapped and confusion will ensue. If you really must label it, please use tape, and not paint.
If you do have different wattages in the same style of
fixture (for example, 375, 575, 750), find a way to
mark this. Some people use color codes on the caps or yokes, others just write the wattage on a small piece of white
gaff or
e tape. IF the
fixture can use different wattage lamps, and most can, don't paint it on permanently.
Whats more important is to get broken equipment out of service, into a specified broken equipment holding area, and then actually fix it. Hang tags are great to keep on
hand to specify an instruments problems while waiting for maintenance, but most places just use white
gaff. The hardest part of any
system of
tracking and maintenance is just getting people to care. I fortunately have an advantage in the fact that if someone doesn't follow my venues rules, I don't have to hire them again. I try to hire the people that care about my equipment like it was their own. These people usually end up being the better electricians in town anyway. I don't think that is a coincidence.
I'm sorry for ranting. These strong feelings are born out of years of work in educational settings, as well as working with inventories built from other peoples used gear and the pain from having to deal with their methods of labeling.