NORTH BAY, Ontario, Canada — North Bay Memorial Gardens Arena, which first opened in 1955, underwent a $12 million refurbishment before the 2013/2014 ice hockey season. The upgrade expanded the arena’s seating capacity to 4,246 and included a number of other upgrades, inside and out. The visual centerpiece for the Ontario Hockey League’s North Bay Battalion, which had just relocated from Brampton, Ontario with a 15-year contract, is the four-sided video display hoisted into place by Westbury National Show Systems Ltd.
Equipped with four 16-by-8-foot (WxH) Theatrixx video panels, the center display weighs 12,300 pounds and has a trim height of about 22 feet. As a safeguard during the hoisting process, the Westbury National Show Systems crew, led by Guy Wallace, relied upon a BroadWeigh wireless load monitoring system from Mantracourt Electronics.
More details from Mantracourt Electronics (www.broadweigh.com):
The BroadWeigh system was used initially to monitor the loads on four electric chain hoists during the lifting operation, and then to confirm the loads on the final rigging hardware for the multi-screen display.
The BroadWeigh portable wireless system offers real-time, simple, effective and accurate load monitoring for rigging professionals, safety officials and site managers enabling them to monitor and log the precise loads on any given rigging point.
Central to the design of the BroadWeigh system are Crosby shackles equipped with a high accuracy, wireless load pin that reports data remotely to a computer or a handheld display. The system is able to monitor multiple load cells and can trigger an alarm should a load exceed a preset parameter. During this project the load data from each wireless load cell shackle was displayed on a computer screen.
David Bond, BroadWeigh’s North American representative, worked together with Wallace and the Westbury National Show Systems Ltd. team to address their requirements and concerns prior to the purchase as well as instruction and support on site during the operation. This instruction included both the hardware and software elements of the system.
“The lifting procedure was a critical stage of the installation,” said Bond. “Should one hoist not support its equal part of the load, then that corner would drop and the structure would tilt on just two opposite suspension points, grossly overloading those two points. This could have caused a catastrophic failure. The BroadWeigh wireless system enabled the team to closely and accurately monitor the situation throughout the procedure.”
The BroadWeigh system is increasingly being seen as a cost effective solution for entertainment venues, touring companies and production suppliers, to provide essential measurements of force helping operatives eliminate overload risks. The BroadWeigh system has been developed in conjunction with entertainment industry professionals for real world work environments.
