episode 7 - cannons and a stage

so, it's been a while since I've written anything, but I've been way super swamped with projects.

I got a huge shipment of steel in the other day, it took some finagling to maneuver 10' pieces on a pallet jack. but I did finally get it in. most of it is for those simple tilt stands, and the new universal bases.

here's most of the parts for the confetti cannons, and and one fully assembled. they are going out this weekend and just need to be painted black. they all operate on 12v dc and I'm hoping to soon have DMX control. but for now it is a 4 channel controller with arm switches and a fire button.

So, this past Sunday I was contracted in to re-rig the truss on the stage. I was able to rent a 36' lift this time so I finally didn't have to do a ton of climbing around in the ceiling. well it started out as this...

and 15 hours later was something like this. I did learn an important lesson while I took this picture, you will notice that the lift is at the other end of the truss. I was planning on repelling off this end, but realized that not only did I forget my rope, but I had on the wrong harness. So, yeah, have fun gettin' down from that:-)

I had no hinges for this truss, so some pipe, cheeseboroughs, and extra shackles should do the trick. I was asked if it was legal to do this. I replied that the police haven't arrested me yet. lol. But I assure you, everything is hung completely safely.





well, that's all for today, tomorrow is going to be a long day for me, I just found out last minute that I have to be in early. so since I only have 5 hours till I have to be back up...

30 days episode 6 - tangent lines in google's sketchup

So, I use Google's Sketchup on an almost daily basis, and compared to Auto Cad, it definitely lacks some features. But over the years I have developed some techniques to help get around it's surprisingly simplistic interface.
If you haven't already watched my video check it out:

it goes through it all step by really fast step.
I'll show you two trick with circles, how to create tangent lines off of, and how to create a circle from 3 points. As you probably know, Sketchup only allows you to specify centerpoint and radius. By default sketchup uses 24 sides/ points to draw the circle, but you can type in any value for more precision. I like using 100 or 360.

 

 ok, so on to tangent lines, let's say we want to connect two circles for a v-belt for a pulley or something create two circles and group them together

draw a line between the centers of each circles and use the center of that line to draw a circle of the same diameter. then move a copy of the smaller circle to the top of the larger. the center of the smaller should be at the top point of the larger. note that if you are connecting circles of the same size it kinda messes up the whole process. simply draw a line out perpendicular from the connecting line and copy the connecting line to where the perpendicular one and the circle cross...

draw a circle from the center of the larger to touch the bottom of the smaller copy. then draw a line from the same center through the crossing of the newest circle and the one we drew in the previous picture. then draw the line that is blue in this picture.

now copy the blue line up to where that line crosses the larger circle.

and we're done! fairly straight forward once you do it several times. I know I kinda breezed through all this, let me know if you need any of it explained better...

30 days episode 5 - new R&D and a new song

Hey guys, unfortunately it has been a long time sine I wrote, not because I really forgot to, but just not that much has happened that I thought would be enteresting. So, I'll write a few things that are coming up.
One of the original projects I built was an automated balloon drop and some cheep but really efficient confetti cannons. Those of course are left at a previous job, and now it looks like I will get the opportunity to re-create a version 2 of each. That should be a lot of fun, and testing always means getting to shoot fun projectiles from the tubes just for grins. If the contract goes through, then they will have to be finished before the end of the month, so look forward to pics, and video of all that. Also going to start running a whole lot of those stands through the shop. and if there's time left in the month I'll prototype a new base for truss and a new speaker stand.
I also have finally recorded a version of one of the songs I've writing for a while.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXNd5OuCtlE
Leave comments on the video and lemme know what you think. Hopefully I will post some more songs I've written soon.