28 replies to this topic

[aquarius]

Hi again all.

In my relentless quest of making my shows safer (for me and my crew) I have come to e-matches and safety.

 

The last shipment of e-matches I recieved from China are much more sensitve to shock and friction than the ones I have used before.

And I have wached the video on YouTube with the "hammertest", pulling, snips and scissors with terror!

 

I will not use the "sensi-matches" before I have worked out a better or safer way as I have more than enough of the good ones.

 

Anyhow, how and when do you fuse (or "e-match") your shows?

 

In my work, we have done it all from arriving with shells and cakes on the firing site and done all the work there, to do all the matching beforehand and transporting the fireworks with e-matches installed. Both in training and before I started out my own company, we did it all possible ways.

 

What I am trying to do is to raise a discussion on how you e-match your articles.

There are pros and cons with different ways of doing this and time spendt will vary from what you choose.

But wich method is safe, wich is safer and what is no-go for you?

 

Feel free to comment!

 

 

[dogsbody]

we always put the ignitors in at site, dont transport with them in!

[aquarius]

I do not disagree with you Dog. I know of two dangers transporting ignitors. One is the chance of static electricity igniting the matchhead. Even thou this is possible I have seen few if any documentation on this other than theory. If static electricity really pose a problem, shipping ignitors in all different ways would statistically generate thousands of incidents.

[Atom Fireworks]

Tis a good suject this, by law there is only one answer my freind and that is fuse on the display site. In reality I doubt very much the teams doing very large pyro-musical comps will be fusing everything up on the day.

 

Static is a worry but no where near as realistic as friction/crush. IF I were to fuse before hand then my method choice would be inserting a strand or two of black match into the igniter housing and then pulling the " head " into it to secure it in place. Doing this on its own is safe because the worst case scenario is that it pops and a little bit of black match burn ( providing you are in a safe environment for this to happen). The you would insert the full igniter head including housing into the QM leader and tape it up.

 

For the most part it is probably best getting on site an hour or so early to fuse there and then, rather than risk transporting a fused article which will make that item illegal to transport anyway as you have modified it.

 

Just my thoughts on it anyway, look forward to hearing others.

 

Jay

[Arthur Brown]

The best system I've seen is to  number the leaders in advance then seal the box for transport. The Igs travel in a closed box and when the shells are placed in tubes they get an ig and their number repeated on the wire end.

[aquarius]

I am with both of you. And having a large show (for us at least) comming up tomorrow we took the middle ground. All igns attached to the mortars. Shells in place but no connection between igns and qm. So, once on site the igns go in the qms and the predefined wire to the slats. This works fine on a sunny afternoon but not so well on a cold rainy day. I have been toying around with the plastic connectors that come with some of the shells these days. They might make things easier. My biggest worry with ematches is friction and shock.

[martyn]

Talons?

[aquarius]

Talons will not work as I am in need of timing more accurate than lighting a fuse.

[phildunford]

There was an article in Pyrotechnica many years ago, showing a trailer rigged with a full compliment of mortars, shells in and fused, all going to a multi way connector. You pulled up on site, parked the trailer, connected the multi way and fired the show! Convenient but risky I would have thought. This was in the states. Don't know if they still do it...

[Arthur Brown]

I've heard of an articulated trailer being fully rigged then pulled to the firing site BUT it was only 100m or so and only a drive across the firing site not on road.

 

Apparently it's OK on the firing site and that one was where the prep site was available all day but the firing site was shared with something else.

 

I still say that my preferred method is to transport both separately and rig on the day. Labour is much cheaper than facing HSE and VOSA for a day in a nice panelled room.

[martyn]

Talons will not work as I am in need of timing more accurate than lighting a fuse.

OK, SFI's ?

[aquarius]

Ok. So we more or less agree that static is less likely than ignition by shock or friction. And that all items should be transported w/o igns inserted.

Wich brings us to the staging area and setup. I am still concidering bying the ematch connectors. If nothing else it will save time during setup. And I believe it is safer to insert a shrouded ematch into a connector rather than a bare one into a qm. Regardless how small the chance is, I consider it safer and better protected in a double shroud against impact.

[aquarius]

Martyn: Do you know the price for these in say thousands?

 

Edit: Did a search, and they are priced at around  65 US cents a pop, exl freight. That's for a case of 720 pieces.

Edited by aquarius, 04 May 2013 - 02:53 PM.

[martyn]

Andrew @ easypyro has them listed at 35p each in cases of 720 - he may be open to negotiation in larger quantities, he is a very nice chap to deal with..

Mike Knox at Pyrosure is the distributor I think - he used to have prices on his site but I can't see them now.

Also, I think they may have recently undergone a redesign, there was talk of them being available as 'clips' of 5, or 8 or 10 or whatever

Edited by martyn, 04 May 2013 - 03:07 PM.

[aquarius]

Martyn: Thanks for the link. I had a look at the SFI and sent away an email to Pyrosure.

I was not aware of this opprtunity, so we will run a test on these and see if they meet our needs.

 

If this is as good as they claim, prefusing the products ahead will save us some time and make tings easier.

It is of course also a matter of price, but I'll see what Pyrosure can come up With.