My 2013 tree plans

ԆцряєсϮ

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Christmas @ the Myrtle (Damicka10) said:
cooper88 said:
Did any of you come up with a final way of how to punch the holes and the eylets. Like cutting with a was punch and then pressing the eylets in ? Ect. Just wondering if a buy cheap drill press is necessary for the build are there alternative way to do it. Cheers
Doesn't have to be a drill press just a press. I used my dads pedestal drill. It's pretty large and sits directly on the floor. Worked great. I'm a big guy and I did it quickly, so not sure how a small machine would handle me going 100 mile an hour but the big machine was fine. I did wear some skin off my fingers though, but I was on a time crunch.


Didnt you end up mounting yours on conduit?
 

ԆцряєсϮ

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cooper88 said:
How did you bend the steel bar into a circular shape for the top and bottom of your tree. Is there a different way of doing it as I have no experience with working with steel. Could you use PVC conduit to replace the circular parts? I want to build on of these for next year's show as I want to get in to using rgb pixels. I think this is a excellent mega tree design. Good work.

Thanks
I used 40x3mm flat bar for the top and bottom rings, the bottom ring is easy as its large enough to do by hand.
Mark out your length then bring both ends together, I held mine with Vice grips while I welded the ends together.
Then when you add in your bracing it will push it out to a near perfect circle.
The key is to work out your dimensions accurately.


For the top ring I made a small jig on the bench and bent it round by hand, similar method just a bit harder as its only a small diameter circle.
I think early on in my tree thread I posted some video of me and my boys punching the holes. It was pretty easy, I started out doing it by hand but that got old pretty quick so I used my drill press to hold the Wad punch and made a small jig to slide the strap through which made it heaps easier. Then I used the eyelet Press I bought to load the eyelets.
The steel I used was a mixture of Gal and just steel as I had some Gal tube already. I ended up painting the whole thing Flat Black anyway so as not to reflect so it doesnt really matter if its not gal, easier to weld if its not anyway.
Grey Primer and then Flat Black enamel from Bunnings, $3 a can ;)
 

mborg10

Michael Borg
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ԆцряєсϮ said:
Christmas @ the Myrtle (Damicka10) said:
cooper88 said:
Did any of you come up with a final way of how to punch the holes and the eylets. Like cutting with a was punch and then pressing the eylets in ? Ect. Just wondering if a buy cheap drill press is necessary for the build are there alternative way to do it. Cheers
Doesn't have to be a drill press just a press. I used my dads pedestal drill. It's pretty large and sits directly on the floor. Worked great. I'm a big guy and I did it quickly, so not sure how a small machine would handle me going 100 mile an hour but the big machine was fine. I did wear some skin off my fingers though, but I was on a time crunch.


Didnt you end up mounting yours on conduit?

Yeah I had to mount my lights to conduit, but still used the steel frame. I have all the straps waiting for ray to send correct lights for 2014. I didn't know the lights were wrong until I got yen mid December.
 

Gilrock

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Yeah my lights are supposed to be on the way. I messaged Ray that some people had trouble with the lenses not fitting in a 12mm hole and that was my intended use so I want to make sure mine will fit as advertised. He responded something along the lines that they should fit but I can always secure them with screws if needed... If he really knew what we were doing with these it would be obvious that's a dumb statement.
 

cooper88

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What pixels did you use for a 5m tree. 5v or 12v and were they 100 count or 50 count. Could someone provide a link to the pixels on rays site. I have been searching a bit but there are lots of similar ones but all of them don't seem to mention the length of the string. Is a sandevices E682 a good first pixel controller. I like how it comes in a kit. Thanks.
 

cooper88

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How many string of pixels would you use for a 5m mga tree so it looks good but is still affordable. 48 string seems too much for my purpose what amount of strings have others of you used? Cheers
 

mborg10

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cooper88 said:
How many string of pixels would you use for a 5m mga tree so it looks good but is still affordable. 48 string seems too much for my purpose what amount of strings have others of you used? Cheers

I used 48 strings of 42 pixels totalling 2016 pixels controlled by a j1sys p12s which pretty much maxed out the controller. The pixels come at 100mm spacing but I wouldnt rely on this being correct and plan for about 80mm spacing.

So if you did 50 pixels at 80mm you would have 4m tree. 24 strings in total could run off a j1sys p2 controller.

Top ring diameter of 300 and bottom of 1800 looks ok layout wise.

Or you could just make the tree 180 degrees instead of 360
 

mborg10

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cooper88 said:
How tall was your tree??

My pole was 6m. approx 0.5 in the ground and bottom frame about 0.5m off the ground. Making the tree approx 5m

The big mistake I made was to punch all my holes, punch eyelets before checking pixel spacings. I made mine 110mm apart and standard is 100mm. I got ray to custom make my pixels at 120mm just to be sure. I placed order end of October and received order mid December. With spacings of between 85 and 100mm. So I went to plan b. 50 lengths of 4m conduit and 30 rolls of electrical tape.

Ray has said he will ship correct lights with my order this year so I will actually get to use the strapping, but next time I'm planning to use standard lights and order allot earlier.

The Christmas rush means longer delivery time and a lot less attention to detail. They look a bit slapped together.
 

Gilrock

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cooper88 said:
What pixels did you use for a 5m tree. 5v or 12v and were they 100 count or 50 count. Could someone provide a link to the pixels on rays site. I have been searching a bit but there are lots of similar ones but all of them don't seem to mention the length of the string. Is a sandevices E682 a good first pixel controller. I like how it comes in a kit. Thanks.

The link to the pixels is in post #1 for this thread...it's not obvious but where he says I plan to use 32 of these the word "these" is the link. Those are the ones I ordered. They are 50 pixels long but like him I plan to cut them down to 42 pixels so that 4 strings fit in a universe instead of 3 so I'm not exactly sure what length I will end up with. I plan to build the straps and then construct a tree to fit the straps....not the other way around.
 

ԆцряєсϮ

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With the interest that my tree seems to be generating maybe I need to do a write up on the build. :D


The specs on my strands were 42 pixels at 85mm spacings, this made the straps from 'D' Ring to 'D' Ring 3600 long.
at each end I marked an extra hole and threaded the ring on before folding this back onto the next hole and then pressing in the eyelet, this gave me 1/2 a spacing of strap before the 'D' ring, if this makes sense.


The top ring:
40x3mm flat bar 800 long with holes drilled every 25mm. Folded into a circle of 254.7mm diameter


Base Ring:
Again 40 x 3mm flat bar 5760mm long with holes every 180mm Folded into a circle This gave a diameter of 1833 mm


My pole was 4500mm long, 500 in ground, 400 to top of base ring, the distance between the top of the base ring and the bottom of the top ring came in at 3515mm but this will vary a little as you tension the straps.
I fixed the top ring to the pole, then the straps to the top ring, stood it up and fixed the straps to the base ring, then I pulled down the base ring to take up the tension on the straps before pinning the base ring to the pole. After the tree had been up over December I did notice some stretching of the straps due to some of the winds we had, and we did have some strong winds. But this wasnt anything to worry about as they still remained fairly tight.


Again I might do a full write up including my drawings so you can pick which bits youd like to use.
Just need to find the time..
 

ԆцряєсϮ

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Sorry these pixels HERE are the ones I ended up using, theyre 12V instead of 5 with black wire.
The difference with these as opposed to the original ones I got for testing was the wire colour, the test ones had the multi colour wire .
And the little lugs that clipped the module into the hole were lower down on the black ones.
Which meant the test ones had a clip in depth of 5mm but the black ones only 2mm, this is where I had to silicone them in place
 

dannyp

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ԆцряєсϮ said:
Sorry these pixels HERE are the ones I ended up using, theyre 12V instead of 5 with black wire.
The difference with these as opposed to the original ones I got for testing was the wire colour, the test ones had the multi colour wire .
And the little lugs that clipped the module into the hole were lower down on the black ones.
Which meant the test ones had a clip in depth of 5mm but the black ones only 2mm, this is where I had to silicone them in place

I used technicoulor lights this year and have had all sorts of problems (well documneted elsewhere). How did you find your pixels? Any problems with failures or getting the correct speed?
 

firebug

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Thanx for the extra effort in doing this write up for your tree ԆцряєсϮ. I will be watching this space... :)
 
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