Star rigging consultant Phil Broad's brief to Out Board was to provide a failsafe system that would halt all the hoists if it detected any one or more of them stopped or failed to move. This was achieved by fitting each of the hoists with Out Board's high-resolution optical encoder modules, the outputs of which were all connected back to the new LiftSafe Hoist Controller Safety System located in the CM6 controller rack high in the roof of the Arena.
LiftSafe provides a bridge for the CM6 hoist controllers' linked Remote GO button which gets interrupted immediately if the system senses a break in transmission of encoder pulses from any of the hoists. Up to twelve encoders can be connected to a single 1U LiftSafe unit, and multiple LiftSafe units can be daisy-chained via their GO Link In / Out XLR's to provide safety management for larger systems and help protect them from damage.
Individual channels on LiftSafe can be isolated to disable unused channels and assist with system fault-finding. There are also individual Run status indicators to confirm healthy encoder activity on each channel, and an overall Stop indicator to confirm that LiftSafe has done its job and stopped the whole system in response to a fault.
The LiftSafe Hoist Controller Safety System will work equally well with any of Out Board CM-Series controllers or DM Series of Direct Controllers, or indeed any chain-hoist controller that uses a simple two-wire Remote GO switch.
(Chris Henry)
