Hanging Speakers

The hanging speakers are cool, but I judged them to be unsafe as they were rigged and took them down.

  1. There is no backup rigging.
  2. If any part of the rig fails, the whole thing comes down.
  3. The load strap hooks don’t lock onto the eyebolts.
  4. The eyebolts appear to be screwed into particle board.
  5. The eyebolts are loaded from an angle such that > 50% of the force is pulling them out.
  6. The aircraft cable is of unknown origin and quality (in particular the crimps). It’s also undersized after derating(10x?) for the very shallow angle and bent over a 90deg metal corner.
  7. The bolts into the metal braces are of unknown origin, and at least one of them (over the arc bench) appears to have failed already.

http://www.jblpro.com/pub/technote/tn_v1n14.pdf has a reasonable guide for doing this in a safe way.

Cheers,
Chris

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Can you post a picture?

Someone at the open night last night was saying the load straps used were
his and he wanted them back, so they would have had to come down anyway but
good looking out. I overheard someone on the couches adt night calling
them the Speakers of Damoclese which was almost worth the risk

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Sorry, I didn’t think to take a picture of them.

No worries, I didn’t go to the space on tuesday and won’t get a chance till Saturday.

This article is great, full of information.
Thanks ^^

I saw the note you left Chris, you made good points.

Thank you for doing that.

Yeah, they were my straps, but anything I leave at the space I feel has a risk of becoming part of the structure :stuck_out_tongue:

The “Speakers of Damocles” was amazing.

I did really like their placement though. We should look at re-hanging them with proper rigging.

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Thanks Chris. It would have been bad if those fell and clobbered someone. You should really only injure yourself at VHS. :slight_smile:

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Tom & I were responsible for the great “Speakers of Damocles” the straps were more intended to be a temporary/proof of concept rigging as we were exploring options for placement. Thank you Chris for taking them down, I recognize the judgement passed and appreciate it came with sound arguments!

I still like the general placement area, ideally we wanted them hanging off of a single point from the one closest to the wall if possible, the straps ended up working in a pinch so we could see them up and figure out a better way.

My apologise to anyone that feared the Speakers of Damocles but was worth it to get the name :wink:

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LOL. Don’t get me wrong. I really liked where they were, and thought they were a good use of space. If we re-hang with chains and proper supports they will be very Promethean, especially if we also attach a fake eagle to the speakers.

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I agree the placement is great! Maybe we can call the new version “Nerf Speakers of Damocles”!

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Until someone hangs more speakers off of them and starts to call them
“Buff Speakers of Damocles”…