Pyro Cannons

FPL pyro cannons fire streamers at WOW

Our Effects Gallery includes other examples.

Pyrotechnic confetti and streamer cannons are ideal when accurate cueing and fixing in precise locations for remote operation is needed. They can be used both indoors and outdoors. However outdoors the wind must be taken into account.

We produce 4 varieties of cannon.

• 75 millimetre for throws up to 15 metres for confetti or streamers.
• 100 millimetre for throws up to 10 metres for confetti or streamers but having a greater volume of confetti.
• 150 millimetre for throws up to 25 metres and having a huge volume of confetti or streamers.
• 150 millimetre confetti buckets for confetti or streamers. These are designed for high venues where substantial fixtures may be few and far between. These have next to no recoil and can be suspended from the ceiling on quite light fittings.

All of these are electrically actuated.

Where wadding may be thrown out this is restrained to avoid flying into the audience.

All cannons come as standard black, but can be painted to match sets.

A Pyro Cannnon

Cannon filling

We have four varieties of filling.

• Confetti
• Streamers
• "Teddy bears"
• Dust

Confetti

Our own helifetti is the slowest falling of all confetti available and we carry the widest range of standard colours.

Obscure colours will be cut specifically for you, so while we can supply these, they are not necessarily all off-the-shelf.

We also have silver helifetti and gossamer helifetti - which is clear and looks like falling fairies wings.

Specifically printed confetti

If you have gift vouchers, prizes, entries into a competition, corporate logos or even conference messages, all of these can be printed, cut and fired from cannons.

While these tissues and papers are not listed as flame retardant, we have had extensive experience with these over the last 15 years. As they are small pieces and not streamers, they do not present a serious fire hazards. We have never had an incident in which these have interfered with lights, even though there have been occasions when cascades of these have fallen over lighting bars full of lights.

Of course in any theatre there will be fire hoses which would reach such area.

Streamers

There are two varieties paper tissue and metallic.

Paper tissue streamers are only available in a mixed colour range at present. The colours are red, yellow, blue, green, white, magenta, orange, and light blue.

Metallic streamers (which have a lovely shimmery look) are available in the colours of your choice from this range: silver, red, yellow or gold, green and blue.

All of these streamer products are flame retardant.

Teddy bears

Teddy bears or similar soft toys are easy to fire out of cannons.

If you do not want to take the chance on hurting your teddy bear, we can that these with individual parachutes.

Each bear can carry a redeemable gift certificate as well.

Kangaroos, tigers, ping-pong balls and Barbie dolls can all be fired from our cannons.

Dust

Lastly white or coloured dust which is great for creating simulated explosions without the need to have real explosions. Care must be taken that the venue is suitable for this to make sure the dust drifts away from the audience.

Special arrangement for outdoors

All of these cannons work very well outdoors. But allowance must be made for the wind. Possibly the easiest way to do this is to have the cannons movable so they can be put up wind to allow for a last-minute wind change.

The motion of confetti and streamers can be described like this. When they are first fired they come very quickly out of the cannon the wind has next to no effect on them as they are travelling so fast compared to the wind speed.

However once the high velocity part of the trajectory is exhausted, as they have considerable air resistance, they virtually come to stop.

At this point the wind will then carry them, and if there is a moderate breeze to a strong wind, it will carry them away very very quickly.

So if you had a strong wind blowing over your audience, the cannons would be best taken up wind from the audience, possibly 10 to 30 metres depending on the type, and fired vertically.

It is impossible to fight the wind by firing these into the wind. They will merely come to halt high in the air, and then be carried swiftly away.

We suggest that you buy some of our one shot disposable air cannons, in a comparable size and fire these in varying wind speeds to get a feeling for what is going to happen in your particular venue.

One standard procedure we use when firing large numbers of prize marked ping-pong balls and confetti over audiences is to mount these on a truck, and drive around the audience to the up wind side.

This also gives the capacity to move the vehicle as a number of these are being fired, compensating for the wind and allowing the maximum spread over the audience.