TSM Project 2008 - Raked Revolve

FIRST IDEAS.

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I have only seen a few plays and two musicals in my whole life, so the ideas ill be coming up with are just going to be completly from my imagination. With this disadvantage I have still been able to come up with a few ideas and a final project that I want to do.

The first thing I wanted to try and create in the Ath was a flying person for the performance "Peter Pan". Not just one that flies from one side of the stage to the other, but when the actor actually flies out to the audience and is able to control the height they are flying at themselves. The health and safety issues and risk assesments would in my eyes be alot of trouble when it is just easier to make the person fly across the stage. The main pieces of equipment needed for this would be a channel track, hanging clamps, 1/8" aircraft cable, 1" rope, a special head block, tram and traveling blocks, a floating block, aircraft cable, a cable end stop, 3/8" cord, a floor pulley, a live-end pulley and a dead-end pulley. I was really wanting to do this but felt that other peoples ideas were a bit more challenging, so I decided to keep my options open and keep thinking about things.

I then thought of "The Wizard Of Oz" and its yellow brick road. For this I was thinking of having a spiral staircase going from centre stage round to one of the fly floors a that also dissapeared when the actors would walk up it. For this the staircase would have been built with metal and no welding atal. The main equipment i would have needed here would be a pipe coupling, washers, newel post section of PVC, 3/4" plywood tread, 3/4" pipe bluster, 2" pipe nd 2 1/2" PVC column, 3/4" plywood bracket and a pipe flange. To help with the stairs actually disappearing with the actor I would use something similar to a chain hoist. However, I felt like this idea was far too complex for me and quite a few other people are wanting to do their projects using staircases.

Finally I was in one of my Lighting Design classes and my teacher mentioned something about a revolve stage. After that, I soon realised what my project was going to be. Enjoy the making of a revolve on a raked stage.

PROJECT INTRODUCTION.

My final decision is to create a revolve on a raked stage. First of all I want the revolve to be sitting flush with the raked stage. There are several ways to make a revolve work. You can hace a cable-driven revolve, it can be gear driven ( like Peter Strains(graduate 08s)spining disc.), a wheel-less revolve (using pivots), a frame-less revolve and finally theres a spring-driven revolve. The raked stage is going to be odd-shaped just to make things a little more complex. I will make a list of the pros and cons of the revolve. Then I am going look at how to build the revolve seperatly from the raked stage after which I will make adjustments to fit the two together if needed to.

PROS AND CONS OF THE REVOLVE AND RAKED STAGE.

RAKED STAGE

When making this raked stage, I'll have to make the angle of it rather small as there will be a person standing on the revolve as it is moving. It will be moving at a fairly fast speed and I do not really want to have the actor come flying off it at high speed. So the stage will have only a small angle.

REVOLVE

The frameless revolve would be built by cutting segements of ply and putting them together with overlaps and small pivot points. If I have chosen to use the frameless revolve the pros and cons would be as follow:

      PRO'S: 1. The design  offers several advantages over framed and laminated ply-                 wood revolves.
             2. The segement developed should minimize waste of plywood.
             3. The revolve can be easily taken apart and put into storage 
                and be taken out to put on stage again as many times as needed.   
             4. The revolve needs no framing and only an ordinary bolt basically        
                to work.    

      CON'S: 1. Roughly 26 sheets of plywood would be used to make it
             2. Really need to think about the overlap, if its too small it may make the 
                revolve rather stiff to work.
             3. Have to really look through caster types as rehersals are taking place
                they may get rattely easily, so try and get heavier duty casters than 
                load analysis might suggest.

The wheel-less revolve would be built by creating semi-circles glued together to create several layers and a full circle revolve, id also need a certain perimeter ring of oil filled ultra high molecular weight to mount to the bottom of the revolve add pivots etc to make it work.

     PRO'S:  1. This revolve has been used before and has said to have run 15 
                revolutions per performance for 40 performances plus tech rehersals,
                the revolve hows no sign of wear and the UHMW still had traces of oil.
             
      CON'S  1. If I was to do this, the revolve would be sitting slightly higher than 
                the stage, there fore a small ramp would also have to be made to hide 
                the front of the revolve.
             2. With the chain motor id be using the revolve would take roughly about 
                10seconds to make half a turn - which is a long time. I want it to be 
                quick.
             3. Also, the chain of the the motor will be running from the revolve 
                upstage to the backwall,so it would be seen if not coverd by the back 
                wall, so I dont think it'd look too good.

Theres also a gear driven revolve that Peter Strain (graduate 08) had made. I dont feel that this would work as it would be horizontal and alot of strain on the area where the actor would be standing. I feel as though it would struggle to make that revolve. There is also a way where you make the bottom of the revolve completly covered in casters. This method can be extremely noisy as any dirt or debri on the floor will make a much louder noise than expected. If I was to create a cable driven revolve all the machinary needed will in the end be quite expensive. For this revolve I would need an idling drum, driving drum, worm gear, variable speed drive, 5 H.P motor, cable to stage drum, take-up, channel drum,tracks for slip stage, thrust wheels and an emergancy manual turnstile. This is a good way, but in my opinion a very expensive way to make the revolve when I can find a much simpler way. The final method I thought of and came across was a spring driven revolve. I have chosen this to be my way of building my revolve.