Rigging a Light

Safe Rigging on the Hoists in TV Studio A

The aim of this page is to describe the safe rigging of lights and other equipment on the studio hoists. The topics covered are:

Safely Rigging a Light.
DMX Addressing
Safe working loads
Scenery Hoists

Safely Rigging a Light

Once you have control of the hoists you need to learn how to attach and remove equipment safely. The system we use for attaching lights and other equipment to the hoists is called a '28mm Spigot'. This is a cylindrical attachment with a pin in the top to stop it falling out of the spigot attachment. This pin is then secured with a second bond in the form of a screw that secures the spigot in place and stops it rotating. The final bond is a safety bond which goes around the yoke of the light and through the spigot holder on the hoist.

To remove a light:

With the hoist lowered to a suitable working height you can undo power and DMX. Remember to unplug from the power socket first and then from the light.
Undo the safety bond and reattach to the yoke of the light.
Undo the screw of the spigot holder, the light should now be free to turn and be lifted.
Lift the light up and remove the safety pin, the light should now drop out of the spigot adapter and is free to be removed.

Once you have removed a light from a hoist you will probably want to attach this to another hoist. To do this you need to reverse the process described above:

Lower the hoist that you want to attach the light to. Be careful not to leave any hoist you don't need access to lowered on the TV Studio floor. People have walked into hoists before, so we advise to wear a hard hat at all times.
Lift the light into the spigot and put the safety pin in place.
Tighten the threaded screw to stop the spigot from turning.
Attach the safety bond and tighten up the thread on the carabiner clip.
Attach the powercon connecter to the lighting fixture and then plug the other end into the C Form power output.
Attach the DMX cable to the light and then either to the Ethernet 1 socket on the hoist or daisy chain from the DMX output of another light.
Check that the barn doors and filter holder are held securely in place with the second safety bond.

DMX Addressing

DMX (Digital Multiplex) is a language that lighting systems use for transmitting information over the whole of a lighting system. Every light can be given a DMX 'Address' which allows a lighting desk to send information, such as how bright or colour choice, to a specific lighting fixture. This is why all the lights in the TV Studio are labelled with a number. This corresponds to the DMX that that particular light has been given. When you are moving lights around the studio the DMX address can accidentally get changed so it's important to check that the address is correct when you are rigging the lights.

Safe Working Loads

It's important to not overload any of the hoists in the studio so knowing how much weight each spigot can take is important information:

No more than 160kg per lighting hoist

Scenery Hoists rated up to 200kg

Scenery Hoists

As well as the hoist for holding lights (40kg limit) we have 12 Scenery Hoists which are designed to accommodate much heavier loads. These hoist are designed to lift pieces of scenery or set up to their limit of 200kg. These can be useful for holding pieces of scenery in the air whilst not in use or for attaching pieces of set that appear to hang in mid air. If you would like to discuss using these please contact one of the technical team and we can discuss how best to use them. If you are using items that weight more than 25kg there's a manual handling risk so we need to be careful when using the scenery hoist to lift items that are more than the limit that one person can lift.

Written by RW

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