Ordinary Days flyer drop

dbaxter

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
The last scene of Ordinary Days has flyers being thrown from a building and we'd like to have them drop into the audience as well. Sort of a confetti or balloon drop, but with sheets of paper. Tissue paper is probably too light and regular 16# 8.5x11 a little hazardous. That's one problem. The other, of course, is how to get it to come down in individual sheets. 16' high ceiling, no overhead access. We can work line and pulleys or wireless dmx solenoids on a cage of some sort. The end effect is to have this shower of paper float gracefully back and forth as it drops to the seats and floor. Not asking for much, is it?
 
I built "Petal boxes" for a production of "the Cherry Orchard" I used a gear reduced motor with an impeller attached. The impeller was just a 2" diameter tube with these rubber flaps attached, 180° apart from each other. The impeller sat on the bottom of the box. the box had an angled bottom to it that funneled the leaves toward the impeller and the opening of the box. Each box was only 24" long and I had several mounted on the grid in several places above the stage. They were relatively quite. They got reused to drop love letters in Eurydice, Leaves in another show and flower petals in another show.
I bet you could build a similar device and make the hand bills out of "onion skin paper".
 
Thanks, Van. I'm having a little trouble picturing the relationship between the impeller and the stack of paper. Your reply indicated the impeller on the bottom of the stack? I'm imagining about 300 rpm or less on the motor? Picturing a kind of fast copier paper feeder concept, right?
 
Thanks, Van. I'm having a little trouble picturing the relationship between the impeller and the stack of paper. Your reply indicated the impeller on the bottom of the stack? I'm imagining about 300 rpm or less on the motor? Picturing a kind of fast copier paper feeder concept, right?
Yeah I was using a 3 RPM motor, which, depending on the size of whatever you are feeding out could provide you with an item ≈ every 1.5 seconds. I was using 'shaded pole' frame motors from Grainger. I've found that the 12-24v varieties are SUPER noisy because to make up for the lack or torque they have to spin up super fast; so I used the 120v version.
I'll dig through stuff and see if I can find a sketch. I may have posted one on here before. I can't remember. I'm old.
 
So crazy idea if you need full sheet. Put a wireless printer overhead and just print blank sheets. Take the paper holder off the front and whala.

Obviously you said you didn’t want standard 8.5 x 11 butim sure you could find something that’s light yet will still feed.
 
So crazy idea if you need full sheet. Put a wireless printer overhead and just print blank sheets. Take the paper holder off the front and whala.

Obviously you said you didn’t want standard 8.5 x 11 butim sure you could find something that’s light yet will still feed.

There’s something oddly satisfying to this solution- maybe it’s just too clever for its own good? :p I’m no pro at making droppables but that just sounds awesome. Okay, okay, I’ll take my 5¢ of knowledge back to my Lighting desk....... xD
 
The paper feeder idea where my head is right now. (After all I worked for Xerox for 40 years). Found some motors and wheels at mpja.com and I'll put my McGyver hat on.

I mean why reinvent the wheel. Just goto goodwill or Salvation Army and get a shitty printer strip it down to its guts and whala.
 
Thought I'd give a little feedback. Here are pictures of the paper feeding mechanism. Got a couple paper feeder trays out of discarded ink jet printers and stripped them down to essentials. The feeder drive is from mpja - $9.95. A video of it's first test here:
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I'm a happy camper. Don't think I'll need a fan or anything to get the effect. Now to make another one...
 

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A++
 
Brilliant +++
 
Turned out great- is it set to feed as long as it has power? That makes it super controllable if you’ve got it on a relay.
 

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