Sky Cycs to Ground Row repurposed lights.

[Chris Chapman]

This year I changed out my old Altman 3 cell, Sky cycs for Selador Vivid-R's for dealing with cyc washes. I'm repurposing the SkyCycs as a ground row, and am running into some "issues."

The instruments are mounted on trunions so they can stand on their own, but by doing this, they are now facing UP instead of down. (Gel facing skyward.)

I'm loading the safety screen in to make sure nothing falls down on the lamps, but the gel now rests on the safety screen and is baking onto the screen. If the screen makes contact with the gel, after a short time I get burn out at the contact point because of the heat transfer. (These are 1K lamps, BTW.)

Is there a better way to deal with the gel, now that these instruments are inverted?

 

[sk8rsdad]

You might invest in a roll of piano wire so you can add it to the inside flap of the gel frame to minimize the sag.

 

[tdrga]

Using a fixture with a gel frame that large will inevitably result in some sag. Adding a piece of piano wire might provide another point of heat transfer, also shortening the gel life.
By using them as a ground row, you are also losing the built-in airflow pattern that draws heat up away from the gel.

The only solution I can think of is a thin piece of polycarbonate (the same size as the gel frame and under the gel frame) as a backer to keep the gel from drooping. I'm not sure how this would stand up to the heat or if there would be problems with color transfer from gel, etc.

Ultimately, the fixtures aren't designed to be used as a groundrow, so you'll be fighting them the whole time. When designers insist on using my cyc lights (not sky cycs, but smaller units) as a groundrow, I make them budget for gel changes with each act.

-Todd

 

[icewolf08]

Some may argue, but the easy solution is to just not put the screen in. All things considered, the screen is designed to contain the lamp if it exploded. IN the air this is great because you don't want glass falling from the sky. On the ground, while glass shards could still be an issue, they are much less so. How often do you drop stuff on your cyc lights anyway? The screen probably wouldn't protect the lamp from anything terribly big.

One thing to be sure of if you go this route is that the gel doesn't sag into the lamp, then you end up with a melty mess.