Celebrating its 10th birthday this year, AVW, a bronze sponsor of the Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference, launched its new Pegasus power flying system at ABTT 2006. Designed for AVW by respected mechanical design engineer Mike Barnett, the Pegasus power flying hoist combines Barnett's engineering skills with readily available, off-the-shelf components to offer safety, reliability and fast delivery times at the lowest possible price, say AVW.
Intended primarily for lifting scenery, lighting bars and curtain tracks, the system is designed to offer clients a range of options to fit any and every possible requirement. Control is via AVW's own Impressario computerised motion control system, which won Product of the Year at ABTT in 2002 and is currently in use on Billy Elliot and the London production of Blue Man Group, among many West End shows.
Zero Fleet is achieved by a travelling sheave arrangement which means Pegasus will fit in the smallest of spaces while still achieving fast wire-rope payout. This innovative design requires a smaller diameter drum, which in turn requires less motor torque, so doing away with the problems of excessive fleet angle or header pulley height.
Offering a payload of 500kg at 1.8 metres a second as standard, custom options are available on this and many other features of the system. Giving better than 1mm positional accuracy, the helical drum is machined to an extremely high tolerance in order to maintain such accuracy and synchronicity when multiple hoists are run together.
Pegasus mounts at 300mm centres, so 150mm batten spacing can be achieved with a simple stagger mounting arrangement, and it is designed to be mounted either horizontally or vertically, to provide a number of wire rope configurations that will suit most installations.
Complying with DIN 56925, the motor has two silent independent fail-safe brakes with monitoring. An incremental encoder is fitted on the motor as standard, for closed-loop speed and position control, with the option of an absolute encoder for diverse and redundant motion monitoring for compliance at the highest levels of safety. Also optional is a load cell for constant load monitoring at the gearbox to give an accurate measurement of true load. Slack rope detection and cross-groove detection can also be fitted using the successful AVW SRD100 units.
(Lee Baldock)
