Drop Panels

I have always been extremly unhappy with our 2 outer gate columns, so after seeing Scare Factory's drop panels at transworld '02, I decided to give my own versions a shot.

Originally I designed the drop panels to fall 14" due to some cylinders I already had laying around. After building a test frame, I realized that 14" sounds like a good drop, but in action, it sucks. Also it provided a drop that would only expose half the corpse that was behind it. I also wanted to have the corpse pop out or extremly close to the opening, but the 14" opening just wouldnt suffice.

So the next step was to either order a pair of 24" cylinders, or design a set of scissor mechanisms to achieve the same 20-24" travel I was aiming for. Of course I had to do it the hard way to prove I could do it. So I designed a scissor lift mechanism that worked out perfectly. The scissor opperates off of a 1.25" bore 8" stroke cylinder was kinda trickey to engineer, but provided a perfect movement. I agree the use of a 20-24" cylinder would have been alot easier, and im sure would have been in the same price range, but I was also concerned that the repeated impact of the wood slamming into the metal woudl eventually destroy the panel. So with this design the board getting damaged was never a concern, but having the guides on the scissor take all the impact, the only worry I ever had was of the bolts sheering off. So to steer away from that possible problem I over engineered the scissor and used 1/2" bolts and added a spring to aid in its return. after 5 days of constant firing, I never ran into one problem.

Another worry did come up though regarding the panel again. I was worried that constant firing would eventually wear down the edges of the panel, so I opted to attach 3/4" metal "L" bars to the sides, which were held in place by 2 strips of 1" polyethelene. It woorked out great, added a cool metal to metal scraping sound upon travel, and will last much longer then a wood to metal relationship.

So below are a couple pictures of its working parts, so check em out.

Oh I almost forgot the best part of the project. I added a 1 gallon aircannon inline with the drop panel, so not only did you get a loud bang from the panel and a sudden introduction of a corpse, but the viewers were also slammed in the feet by a huge loud blast of air. We had everyone startled with that one, even if they knew it was comming. It was great.