Need to build a portable drop system.

[Martyman]

I hope someone can help. I am a traveling one man comedy show. I am looking to build a system in which I raise a 50 -200 lb weight and then be able to release it at gravity speed. The weight acts as a counter weight which is attached (through pully lines) to a tear away suit that I am wearing. Each venue I work will differ, some will have fly systems and most will not. So compactability and simplicity is at the top of my list.

I've looked at winch's but most are not for overhead lifting. I'm looking for speed here, some sort of system that allows us to crank the weight up, lock in, then a simple lever or foot release, dropping the counterweight on to a waiting crash pad surrounded by a drop cage.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated or companies that might be able to help construct this.
Thanks sooo much
Marty

 

[len]

Any time you use the phrases "home built" "weight" and "drop" together, you're asking for trouble. This is not something you want to mess with. Your liability should anyone or anything get injured would be huge. The only people I can think of to contact is Flying by Foy (never worked with them but I'm told they're the best). I just went to their website and there seems to be a virus infecting it, so maybe wait a day or two before contacting them.

 

[avkid]

If I am understanding this correctly, you stay on the ground as the devices rips off your suit?

 

[FatherMurphy]

It might be more helpful if we can think in terms of what you're trying to accomplish, not how you first thought you might go about it. I'm gathering that you're standing on stage, wearing the tearaway suit, and you want it to suddenly rip off your body and fly up out of sightline. While dropping a counterweight offstage is one way to accomplish that, there are other methods possible.

One that comes to my mind is a hydraulic or pneumatic cylinder attached to a frame on one end, and a block and fall on the other, with the block and fall also attached to the frame. If the block and fall is a four-line system, then a one-foot movement of the cylinder would equal a four-foot movement on the live end of the rope, at four times the speed of the cylinder. Some math would need to be done to find the best solution for cylinder size, pressure, force required to rip the suit, etc., but nothing would need to fall, and the cylinder itself could be ground mounted offstage rather than overhead.

You would still need to span the stage with trussing, and depending on the stage size, that could add up quickly in terms of quantities of stuff, truck space required, and dollars to purchase. You could ask for local provide for some of the trussing, but you'd never be able to be sure of what you were going to get, and how suitable it will be for your effect.

Any decent scenery or special effects shop should be able to come up with something, but it will be pricey - I can see this passing $20K if you buy trussing plus the effect. When you talk to them, come prepared with thoughts about how fast you will need the suit to travel (1 sec to fly 16'?), weight of suit, force required to rip, how it will connect, how much slack might be needed so you can move around before the effect, how you might be blocked to get hooked up to the lift cables, etc.

The slack/hookup part might be tricky to overcome, the cable will need to be tight just before the effect, if you have to have 20' extra to walk on from offstage, that will be another parameter to deal with. If there's no way to be connected after you're in place onstage, that will make it difficult.

Have you thought about other ways to blow the suit? Sew in flat spring steel and electromagnets? Helpers on either side of the stage with horizontal pull lines?