Hanging the Chandelier!

As those of you at school will already know, the chandelier was actually hung a couple of weeks ago, but we’ve only just got round to writing about it!

In all it took a few days to do the whole operation due to the usual teething difficulties. The first step was fitting the cantilever arm that the chandelier hangs from. This cantilever was designed by our structural engineers as a big lever, with the chandelier on one side and counterweights on the other side. After some final measurements and adjustments the installers lifted up the steel arm on their scissor lift.

However once it was up there we discovered that the arm was sitting a bit lower than expected. After some quick calculations we decided to leave the arm where it was and adjust the chandelier’s cables to fit.

Here is how the whole thing looked befre being loaded with the chandelier or weights.

The next morning was very exciting as we started adding weight to the arm, first with one counterweight, then a section of chandelier, then another weight and so on until the chandelier was hanging a couple of feet off the ground.

All that then remained was for the installers to hoist the chandelier to its final height of 4 metres and connect the steel cables that connect it to the cantilever arm. They then made sure everything was just right and plugged in the chandelier!

Everyone is very pleased that the chandelier is now finished and up, and we are looking forward to the official launch on September 1st. However if you can’t wait til then, there are some sneak preview pictures on the right..

putting it all together…

School was full of excitement and anticipation as term came to an end and the chandelier came together last week.  Between tidying up and signing each other’s shirts the P6+7′s helped us to attach the last few things and hang the rings from the king ring.  We result in a final assembly and lighting up for everyone to see, here’s the result…..

We have also been meeting with shop fitters to see if they can install the chandelier for us over the holidays before everyone comes back to school.

Wiring and lighting up

Dave, our lovely lighting designer has been in school today to finish off the wiring for all the lights…

Here’s a wee sneak preview…

the wooden rings…

…arrived this week and everyone has been busying kitting them out with all their cups / rulers / pencils / drawings

They look and smell beautiful!!

plastic ring of lightbulbs

The acrylic ring arrived this week so Mrs Kelly’s P6 class have been busy fixing in the old lightbulbs with clips made from old metal coathangers.

Manufacturing the rings

We have already taken delivery of the acrylic ring for the lightbulbs to hang in, which some of you will have helped to do on Tuesday.

After some complications with the aluminium construction we made a decision to change our designs of the other rings to be made from wood. We found that this was cheaper, of a similar weight and can be done much more quickly, which is what is now happening.

Our joiner, Gerry can be seen here having just cut out the rings that will next week be used to hang rulers, pencils and drawings from.

Gerry is using a router (the yellowy coloured machine in the photo above) attached to a rotating arm to cut all the circles. This generates a lot of dust, so in the photo below he is clearing this out with a metal ruler.

assembly

We’ve been at school this week and the P6 and 7s have been working very hard to get everything assembled and ready for when the metal rings arrive.

 

cable tying cups together

drilling holes to hang the pencils

377 pencils

 

the ruler layer

Getting the parts

Florence has been very busy collecting some of the many parts we need to build the chandelier, as we hope the school has too.

We have now bought all the lighting components (parts)a and the hundreds of ties that we need and are ordering some of the harder to find objects to put on the chandelier.

Everyone is collecting water cooler cups, pencils, old clear lightbulbs, coat hanger and Barr’s bottles, and we will be in school on Monday to help produce the drawings for the bottom layer of the chandelier.

The coat hangers are for making a special clip for holding the lightbulbs in place, which I shall try and photogrpah to put up here. As I was looking for old coat hangers I came across this intriguing picture:

If we get too many coat hangers maybe we can make one of these!

Engineering Drawings

This week has been about engineering drawing: The drawings are now ready to go to the fabricators, we are just waiting to get them checked by our engineer. Its important to get a second opinion on technical drawings as they contain all the information needed to make the chandelier and any mistakes in them might result in the chandelier being made incorrectly.

The engineering drawing for the top part of the chandelier, the King Ring

Above is one of the engineering drawings. It shows the top part of the chandelier, the King Ring, from above and from the side and also shows close up views of the more detailed parts. There are lots of measurements (dimensions) indicating the sizes of different parts, and notes with further instructions to the fabricator on how we would like the part to be constructed. The text ‘Not for Manufacture’ will be removed when the drawing is approved and handed over to the fabricator – drawings go through lots of revisions (versions) before being finished!

The nice thing about using a local fabricator is that we can go and speak to them in person in case there are any unclear parts of the drawing.

Calculations

Following our meeting with McMillans we have been checking what thickness of cable will be required to hang the chandelier. To do this we’ve been using the computer model to calculate the weights of all the parts, and then using a bit of maths we can calculate how strong the cables have to be. This will then tell us how thick the cables have to be as thicker the cable, the stronger it is.

To be safe we make sure we ask for cables that will be at least 2 times stronger than the calculations tell us they need to be.