UK Pyrotechnics Society Forums: scjb - Viewing Profile - UK Pyrotechnics Society Forums

OK, hit the wrong button and rep'd Exat... ooops! I was actually going to make a comment about that particular piece of legislation, but have since thought better of it.

whoof, on 03 March 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:

To be honest, not really. Done properly, it's a lot of time and effort for a pretty one-off gag, even by SFX standards. There aren't many clients who are willing to stump up for it, when they can get some massive pyro looks for the same money.

The largest applications of shocktube I've been involved with were (1) for tracing out geometric elements on a stage set, and (2) for the de rigueur lightning simulation. For the set gag, the lengths were relatively short, but lots of them, firing in succession over the course of maybe ten seconds, whereas for the lightning gag, there were 32x long lengths from the mothergrid to the floor, fired in very rapid sequence to try and emulate the long pulse of a lightning strike, with the top end bundled together and progressively branching out all over the place. The speed and short duration of the pulse, whilst the main attraction of shocktube for SFX are also the main problems... sometimes it's just too damn fast! Literally, blink and you've missed it.

whoof, on 03 March 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:

It's been ten years since I did anything sequenced with shocktube, so now a single shot Scorpion HR-1 does fine for me when I want to play (ps, don't buy the Scorpion for SFX work, it's not ideal). However, yes the tips are based on a mono 6.35mm jack and are relatively cheap, though I suspect they don't anchor the tube as well as some units (they are just a push fit). I'll get some photo's for you next week.

whoof, on 03 March 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:

The only time I've had shocktube not fire was when trying to initiate directly with electric matches. NoMatch, sparks and shotgun primers are all reliable.

EDIT: Ignore my last. I've stuck to one brand of tube (Exchem\EPC), and wasn't aware of the variation in internal dimension with other manufacturers. Certainly for spark initiation it sounds rather annoying!

Finally pulled my finger out and listed these on eBay...

Whoof. Horses for courses tbh. The EBW for shocktube is new to me, so can't really comment. The one thing that spark (plasma discharge?), shotgun primer and the EBW (from a CD firing system) have in common is that it's tricky to get multiple shots fired sequentially. That was where the NoMatch starters were useful, you could fire lots of shocktube lines as quick as you liked, and the only issue was the parameters of your firing system.

Exat. I was looking through websites for spare shocktube tips, when I saw these "EBW" 's from Ideal Supply. I've not used them, but will probably be ordering some now I've seen them...