Theater Lamp Post Actuation

Product Family: Pneumatic
Product Used: CC30 Cable Cylinders
Product Type: Standard

Application Requirements:
Stroke: 168” (4.2 m)
Orientation:  Vertical

Application Description:  
Lamp post to rise out of the floor, on stage, during musical theater performance..

Challenge:
For their upcoming performance of “Singing in the Rain”, the set designers at the Utah theater wanted a lamp post to come out of the floor for a dance number. This was also going to be a wet environment, as it was the key part for the “raining” portion of the program. To make things even tougher, the ideal lamp post was 14 feet tall.

Tolomatic Solution:
The engineering manager at the theater called their local Tolomatic distributor.  After a little discussion, they agreed on the idea of using Tolomatic’s Cable Cylinders.  The theater had used these in the past – benefiting from their flexibility of mounting and low cost.  They hid the actuators inside a set piece, used a compressed air tank, and worked magic with a wireless remote control. Built-to-order at the required 14 ft length (that’s the easy part, Tolomatic can make these in lengths over 23 ft as a standard.)  They needed the 3″ bore to get the necessary force, and it required 2 to move the overall weight of the lamp post. With only 4 weeks to design, test and install; Tolomatic’s fast, built-to-order delivery was critical for this project. A special crate was fabricated to ship these long length actuators.

Customer Benefit:

• Pneumatic actuators gave reliable performance in a wet environment.
• The appearance of the lamp post became a “magical” part of the performance.
• The actuators were delivered on time and the entire system worked great.

ARTENT-010-P