Electro Magnet Drops For 'Wounds to the Face'

For those of you who saw or have been involved in 'Wounds to the Face' you may know that the Placards which drop during the show were triggered by electro magnets. At the start of the production process we planned on using a device called a Solenoid. This device [Image 1 below] works by using an electro magnetic field to attract a pin into it. We planned on building a wooden housing for the solenoid so that when the pin was attracted into it a ring attached to the Placard would drop, therefore unravelling the material. However, the downwards force of the rolled placard on the Pin was too much weight for the solenoid to work.

Solenoid

So, back to the drawing board. There were originally 15 Placards but this was then cut down to 12. we experimented with still using the solenoids but building a new housing so that the weight would be relieved from the pin. This was not successful so we began looking at alternative methods. Steve phoned up The Citizens Theatre and managed to get 9 Power to de-energise dropping devises that they had made.