Conventional Fixtures Safety Cabling Top Hats/Barndoors

Should all barndoors and top hats be safety cabled?

I've seen it done both ways.

Since some top hat manufacturers don't include predrilled holes or places one could drill a hole for safety clips and most lights have gel retaining clips now, is it safe to say that it isn't necessary to safety cable them?

I haven't seen any definitive answer on this yet...
 
Even if you have not seen a definitive answer on it go with your gut instinct. Think about what a barn door will do to a human being if it fell on someone's head from a minimum 20 feet in the air. Always ask your self this question, is it above someone head? Then it needs to be made safe for the sake of injury or possible death and lets not forgot about a lawsuit.
 
Something that always boggled my mind is why accessories don't come with safeties already installed. I know some do, but why not all? I think it would go a long way in providing a safer industry. Especially in amateur and educational environments where people often don't know what they don't know. In the same token, I appreciate BMI Supply and other vendors who do not sell lighting instruments with out including safety cables.

/end impromptu mini rant.

~Dave
 
Accessories, such as tophats, color extenders, barn doors, and whatever else, should ALWAYS have safeties. These don't even need to be real AC safeties either. It's pretty standard in the industry to just tie a piece of tieline to a tophat, tie a bowline in the other end, and loop that around the T-handle of a Source Four. Yes, it's not as safe as using integral AC safeties on everything, but it's certainly better and cheaper than having nothing.
 
FWIW, I've known a few different people end up in the ER from a falling color frame. Hate to see what a falling barn door would do to a person.

Fun fact: a color frame falling from an FOH catwalk 40' above the seating has more than enough capability of slicing clean into the upholstery of a seat.
 
Fun fact: a color frame falling from an FOH catwalk 40' above the seating has more than enough capability of slicing clean into the upholstery of a seat.
Indeed. I have seen a frame fall from an electric at half that height stick right into the stage floor like knife thrown in a circus act. For a while the paper frames were popular option but I have not seem them in a while. Of course they did often char from the heat of higher watt fixture. So that was discouraging.
 
S4 Par safety.JPGFinally got a picture of the current method.

48 S4 Pars @ 750w, with 3" color frame extenders.

Cheap carabiner (about $5 with split ring), additional 1" split ring (about $1 ea,), 6 inches of chain at $.80 ea. piece, so about $7 ea. Plus labor which is about 4 hrs. work., so $100. Total cost less then $500.

Easy to construct. I thought about using 1/16 aircraft cable and nicropress, just time consuming in the manufacturer. This was pretty simple.

Allows easy removal of the safety if the fixture doesn't want/need the extender as well as keeps the extender with the fixture when changing lenses.
 
That's a pretty cool idea Steve. I will steal that in the future for sure.

I did not read through the entire thread, but I always have some sort of safety on barn doors, especially if they're sitting in 8" fresnels where the gel holders are these small tabs on the bottom and sides of the instrument. I've definitely gone the tieline route before, and it handled the heat fine. I find that top hats fall out of sourcefours when striking them sometimes, because people will forget to close the gel clip over them, then woops, "HEADS!" from the catwalk when the instrument is removed and tipped over to get it off the pipe. I feel that's just solved by removing the tophat and gel before striking the light.
 
That's a pretty cool idea Steve. I will steal that in the future for sure.

.

Note that Derek commented to me, correctly, that it might not be rated hardware (or that this might be the determination of someone more learned then I) and that's a point I had not considered. Not sure what the "code" would be on that, but will research further. For now I'm happy that we moved to a stronger chain (and that I finally found some) that makes the whole thing a bit beefier. I'm looking at it as a common sense application.
 
Note that Derek commented to me, correctly, that it might not be rated hardware (or that this might be the determination of someone more learned then I) and that's a point I had not considered. Not sure what the "code" would be on that, but will research further. For now I'm happy that we moved to a stronger chain (and that I finally found some) that makes the whole thing a bit beefier. I'm looking at it as a common sense application.

I don't know that a safety cable is listed in any codes. As far as I know it's just always been standard to do so, but not required. And for a top hat that weights nothing I think anything would be fine as long as you didn't have to worry about heat melting/burning it.
 
I think a lightweight chain is fine for top hats, but maybe instead of split rings, small quick links would be better?
 
1/16" GAC, swaged to the accessory (drill a hole if you have to) at one end with a quick-link or dog clip at the other end. That's how we've done it here at our large Las Vegas show with every gel frame/pattern holder/barn door/top hat/twin spin, etc. and we have over 3400 fixtures! Learning to properly swage with Nicopress is a good skill for everyone in this industry to master.
 
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1/16" GAC, swaged to the accessory (drill a hole if you have to) at one end with a quick-link or dog clip at the other end. That's how we've done it here at Cirque with every gel frame/pattern holder/barn door/top hat/twin spin, etc. and we have over 3400 fixtures! Learning to properly swage with Nicopress is a good skill for everyone in this industry to master.

What you describe really is the best solution. I think its the high price tag of a Nicopress tool that scares people off, but Loos & Co tools are cheaper and of high quality, and a tool that does only 1/16" is actually rather affordable.
 

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