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indiefilm

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Everything posted by indiefilm

  1. I need to rent or buy a Rycote blimp and softie kit or similar in San Francisco Bay Area today ASAP. Any suggestions? mark four 1 five seven 2 4- zero 6 8 zero
  2. How do you do sound when “words falling on deaf ears”?
  3. I finally received my Penn Elcom 4U aluminum drawer that is 18 inches deep from England about three weeks ago. Due to the fact that they have to wait until they Get a full container going to whatever port you want them shipped to it took like five months to get it. I ordered a total of six but to save money I let them ship the other five to the LA port. I still have not received those five due to the back ups at the ports which must be really bad in LA But I understand they should be shipping to me in San Francisco fairly soon. I am very pleased with the aluminum one that I got and I have put a lot of heavy items in it with no problems. It has the same drawer glides as their steel version and is identical in every way except for the fact that it’s made out of aluminum sheet which is a little thicker than the steel sheet. If you want to put extremely heavy objects in it you can always swap out the drawer glides fairly easily I assume
  4. Sorry, just saw your post. I have been a bit distracted due too a car accident in which my car rolled over a couple of times breaking my finger, giving me whiplash and a concussion. I am mostly recovered now 3 months later except for short term memory problems due to the concussion and the need for seeing a chiropractor for my neck. The bright side is I am now the proud owner of a black, 2020, Mercedes, Sprinter, tall top, 4 x 4, passenger van as replacement for my Toyota FJ Cruiser which was totaled. All these things have been a distraction but I am now starting back into picking up where I left off regarding the cart.
  5. Can we see photos of the accessories?
  6. I thought you already bought a cart? I’m not exactly sure what you are referring to with Lectrosonics but companies with deep pockets and a gaggle of lawyers on retainer can file a new provisional patent application every week which protects their ability to do things they could not otherwise do. What is their annual patent budget? No, It is illegal to claim patent pending prior to filing your application. I’m sure some people do it cause I’m not sure there’s anyway for at least a year to determine if they filed. It is not illegal however to claim something is patented when it is just patent pending even when the patent has not been granted as long as you have filed an provisional application application. You can file, never get your patent granted or abandon it by stopping payment of fees and still say it’s patented, which seems absurd, because it isn’t. I’m not a lawyer so consult a lawyer. You can call the USPTO and ask them any question you want and they’re one of the most responsive efficient and well run government organizations you will find at least as far as their Customer Service question answering department is concerned. The same is true for their trademark help desk.
  7. If I do that now the USPTO won’t let me patent it. Actually there may be a grace period of one year in the US but lawyers discourage counting on it and there is no grace period in most other countries. I don’t make the rules.
  8. I don’t profess to be a “sound guy”. Don’t do any sound any more so no competition from me. Have always done way more camera than sound. I am now an inventor of non electronic gear primarily for audio/video production industry. A good cart design should be easily adaptable to the environment it is being rolled on or in as well as for the attachment of various accessories and gear necessary for use in the area of the particular profession using it. Oh, and it should be ergonomic, efficient, feature rich, fun to use and sexy.
  9. Ha ha. The blue ones cure Covid. I forgot I told you I was designing a cart when I met you on that IATSE gig. Well that was quite a while back so I had not started on the “vertical” cart design, which in our case we call a hybrid cart, at that time. I look forward to seeing you again Dalton. You’ll have to jog my memory because I can’t remember what I told you about the one I was working on then and it’s driving me crazy, but whatever I said I’m glad you remember it. They were a pharma company but we scared them into changing their name.
  10. Hello Need help in SF Bay Bay Area setting up pair of Lectrosonics rackmount DSQD 4 channel receivers and Lectrosonics ALP620 antennas for photography purposes. Our prototype location sound mixer cart is pretty much complete and I could use some help installing this loaner gear so we can photograph and video the cart with it. It doesn’t really have to work it just Hass to look like it’s working and look like it set up correctly . Anyone want to volunteer to help me with this since I’m more of a camera guy than audio guy. Cart is in Richmond right off 580 West and Richmond Pky., not far from eastern end of Richmond/San Rafael bridge. 10 minutes from Berkeley. You can get a sneak peek at our revolutionary sound cart design and even make requests for custom modification which we will seriously consider. We will require that you sign a non-disclosure agreement and keep all information confidential. In the unlikely event that you make a suggestion which we like and also turns out to be patentable you agree to assign ownership of that claim idea to Stabilitech for $1 but you would be named on the patent, You would also get dibs on buying a prototype cart at a great discount when they are available for sale after we file our patent application. Thx Mark Pope Stabilitech Mark.Pope at StabilitechVideo dot com
  11. indiefilm

    Sound carts

    What is it specifically you like about their cart and which model do you have?
  12. indiefilm

    Sound carts

    I agree some set experience is helpful and or lots of research. It is also good to design something that is truly customizable, not just hyped to be. I think the test for that is can a newly designed but previously unplanned accessory be easily and quick releasably attached or detached. That requires lots of knowledge, creativity and skill and is the part that is far more difficult and time consuming than almost anybody could imagine. Your needs will change over time. Frankly, I think many people build their own cart because they think it will be fun or easier or cheaper than it is and they don’t know what they don’t know. I have not been able to figure out how it came to be that so many location sound mixer‘s attempt to build their own cart but camera operators, DITs and Steadi cam operators do not. If you were building a hospital would you 1) hire a doctor to design it or 2) hire an architect who specializes in hospitals and who will by law have to hire a structural engineer to design the structural elements? I hope you pick the latter. I have seen DIY Sound Cart designs that cost about twice as much as they should have in 8020 Inc. parts And yet the design is much less strong and useful than one I could have built with parts costing half as much. When I saw one get lots of raving compliments I just smiled and bit my lip. That’s the thing with structural design. More material just costs more and weighs more but there’s no guarantee more material in the wrong place makes it one bit stronger. Also, connections can be the most important part as they are often the weakest link and the least understood and can cause catastrophic failures. I have been working on my design for a soon to be released cart for almost 4 years and abandoned (for now) the working prototype of the earlier horizontal version for a completely different Rackmount optional vertical version after 2-1/2 years. Nobody building their own cart just for their own use would ever go to that expense, time and trouble to strive for perfection. Someone like me with a BS in Architecture and 3 years as a structural engineer working for SOM under the engineer who designed Sear Tower in Chicago who has worked in video production since 2009 and is very detail oriented would. I have seen fiascos like a camera cart designed by a “30 year grip” be a big sales flop even though manufactured and sold through MSE. I could’ve told them in advance it was a terrible design but I doubt they would have listened. It was obvious they probably liked it because it utilized a lot of parts that came from their existing catalog. That’s wishful thinking but not a good reason to go with a design. The only feature I liked about the prototype they eliminated when they made the production version. When I talked at NAB to the now late owner of MSE, Ed, he told me they didn’t even bother to bring it to that show because they only sold one at the previous show. I won’t name names but on one of the Ursa Straps location sound cart interviews on YouTube you will hear an Academy Award winning location sound mixer confirm that after buying his cart he had to have the large wheels and axle repositioned so that it “wouldn’t fall over into a mud puddle”, his words. This was a professionally manufactured standard model cart, made by one of the oldest sound cart manufacturers if not the oldest. The minute I saw the design it was obvious to me they put the axle where they did to make the cart’s big wheels not stick out as much for tight spaces, but did so with no concern for the fact that that would make it very prone to flipping over. That’s an amateur choice and not one a company like mine with a name like Stabilitech would dare choose. The same manufacturer tried to scare people into not buying carts from the newer players in the industry by insinuating they might go out of business and you won’t be able to get replacement parts. Companies of all ages go out of business every year, especially ones with cart designs prone to flipping, so I would recommend the best solution to that is to buy a cart designed with little to no proprietary parts, which I am doing for that reason as one selling point. Most cart manufacturers intentionally lock you into proprietary designs because they count on having way overpriced accessories, that you can only get from them, to boost profits. I recommend you consider the cost of the accessories and whether the type of design locks you into that brand’s accessories when choosing carts, even the accessories you may not realize you will want till later or may not exist yet.
  13. indiefilm

    Sound carts

    I sent you an email about carts. let me know if you can’t find it. Mark Pope
  14. Doesn’t look ”top heavy”. Front casters are just too close to each other.
  15. My two cents, I would have used a lot more screws to attach the Alucobest sheet that I see on the bottom shelf, especially along the long sides. Those two screws in the middle and the sheet surrounding them will receive 90% of any shear forces in my estimation (loads like water travel the shortest distance), and if there is a failure, the panel will tear out before the screw bends or breaks assuming you used 1/4-20 screws. I’ll have to check that out. What distributor did you go thru? I have some samples of a 1/4” product with aluminum sheet on outside laminated to corrugated plastic. The aluminum is much thicker that on some other products so the 12” square sample seems pretty stiff. It is quite light. Unfortunately they had a 5 sheet minimum $1250, or there was a $500 surcharge for less than 5 sheets which means $750 for one sheet plus shipping. Sheets were 4’x10’ as I recall.
  16. Thx for update and pics. Where did you order the Alucobest from and did they cut and drill it for you? Is it corrugated plastic?
  17. Cool, which caster did you select? Curious, do they charge the same for just drilling a round hole as for making a threaded hole or a complex CNCed hole?
  18. How’s the cart coming? Received any parts from 80/20 yet? I was considering having them do some custom milling for me but not if it takes forever.
  19. What was the total cost of all the 80/20 parts? Some of their specialty parts are very pricey.
  20. May I ask what kind of rack cover face are you referring too?
  21. Check this kind of handle out. I’m sure the diameters vary depending on which drill they are made for. I prefer the ones with a cast aluminum split ring end instead of a strap. https://www.ereplacementparts.com/side-handle-assembly-p-140583.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwlvT8BRDeARIsAACRFiVhxJGcjVptQ35jHkr_7s2FcQdwBmfkiIGz0nK4oXUDsazAKP4J-5gaAgFtEALw_wcB
  22. What size diameter are you attaching the handles to? It is quite clever but Inovativ did not invent it. I’m sure the patent is expired for whoever did. It is the same mechanism used for certain removable power tools handles. I am not sure for which tools, probably for bigger drills. I see them by themself at my local “recycle” place for purchasing anything used. I picked up a few used ones for possible use some day but never have. Not sure where they are since my last move was recent. They may need to be adapted with a rubber collar to reduce to your specific diameter as they are larger. I’m sure they can be purchased as replacement parts for the tools.
  23. Are you referring to lengths of the t-slot framing profiles?
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