I recently posted asking about the various brands of deck stand and ended up buying a Prolight Stan12A which is the 4ft stand with a dual bar overhead. I went for the dual bar as there wasn't much price difference and I was guessing it would be much better at holding weight.

Now I need some kind of clamps to fasten my lighting and believe I need G-clamps? I've been looking around and everywhere seems to sell 50mm clamps. I just measured the overhead and the bars are 25mm. I know this sounds stupid but is the 50mm clamp ok or should I be specifically looking to buy 25mm clamps?

Also, do I hang all my lights from the lower bar or is there a method/different clamp I should use and split the load between the upper and lower bars?

If it makes any difference the main lights i'll probably use most often are 2 acme moonflowers, 2 geni spinmaster 3's and a Chauvet Vue 3. Maybe a cluster laser too depending on the gig.

Sorry for asking loads of nooby questions but after so many years out of the game i'm really trying hard to get my rig as good as I can afford it to be before I start gigging again.

For clamps Ultimax do a 25mm clamp and so do Rhino the Rhino clamps are cheaper and can be found Click Here

Ray

Rhino quick release clamps are much better than G clamps

No "screwing around", no scratching of paint and much quicker assemble/breakdown times

The best prices I had last year were on www.decks.co.uk

http://www.decks.co.uk/products/Rhino/clam02

The quick release clamps state 10kg maximum load. The Spinmasters are 8.7kg, do you think they would be safe?

They should be safe, yes. You are well within the guidelines.

From my experience, declared safety loads are at least a third or more below the actual safety limit anyway. in critical environments i've seen safety loads two or three times the one declared on the product (lifts for example)

Whatever type of clamp you use, you should also be using safety wires anyway

http://www.decks.co.uk/products/Rhino/clam03

The Rhino clamps are simple and in my opinion better value than the G clamps.

When you get them, you screw in the pin half of the clamp into each of your lights and they stay there permanently.

The female spring socket is permanently fixed to your truss (beware the predrilled holes in some stands are sometimes smaller than the clamp bolts, nothing a drill wont sort out though)

The beauty is that at the gig, you just push the lamp into the the spring socket and it holds it there while you tighten up a simple safety bolt by hand.

I think there are one or two YouTube demos of this.

I hope that helps

Nice one, thanks Teez. I just ordered half a dozen :-)

You should never exceed the SWL.
If it states 10kgs then you must not exceed 10kgs, yes the product is tested to a higher load but 10 kgs is the maximum that the product is safe at.

The entertainment industry has had many incidents and accidents over the last few years Sample Video

Manufactures spend many thousands of £ / $ designing a product which will be safe to use.
I hold a riggers certificate and part of the course is about safe loads and working to the limits.
You may find that the LOLER regulations affect usage See Here and here

Your insurance may also be invalid.
Its Better To Be Safe Than Sorry

I'm going to get a set of those myself - will make life a lot easier when mounting lights.. Its annoying as with g-clamps and the spinmasters that the g-clamps are bulky and force the light fixture to be angled further down (although what is the best way to mount spinmasters? flat with fan facing towards the audicence or as-veritcal as it will go?)

Other advantage with them is that g-clamps are quite bulky and can get in the way when the lights need to be stored away..

David

Use a safety wire rated higher than the max load. Attach the wire to different point on the fixture and wrap around trussing/tbar etc.
For the fixture to fall, there would need to be 2 separate failures (unlikely), so this is much safer.

I did my daughters 13th last night, and didn't use safety wires. The tbar was behind me, so risk to the children was none (no one came behind/alongside the set-up.
But.. I was aware of 3 large scanners fairly close to my head!

Jason

What if there isn't a secondary fixture point? Most scanners are screwed in in both places, so both bolts would have to go on that if one of those was to fail...


Cheers,

David

Good point. My scanners have a very solid handle, so I use this as a secondary fixing point, but my old "Exercet" moonflowers, and my LED moonflowers only have the fixing bracket, so not many options.

Bring back light boxes and traffic lights! lol

Jason

I totally agree with what you say. My post does not advocate ever going above the SWL.

I was answering a question that was doubting whether or not a weight quite close to the max was safe.

My point was that users don't need to build in safety margins with weights as the manufacturers have already done so themselves. Therefore a 10kg light is safe on a bracket with a SWL (safe working load) of 10kg.