Robe collaborated with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania based lighting designer Scott Warner on this highly innovative product - featuring an integrated fan in the centre of a moving head, surrounded by a ring of 24 high powered individually controllable RGBW multichip LEDs.
Warner was in Orlando on the Robe booth to see the production model Cyclones for the first time ... and was delighted. "It's very special to have something you draw and dream about brought to life in this way," he enthuses.
Warner originally hit on the idea when touring with a client in the UK. He had to move his lights on a daily basis to accommodate the wind machines onstage that were used to cool the artist. Instead of getting grumpy, he had a eureka moment ... "Why doesn't someone make a fan with a light in it?"
A short while later, he met with Robe's sales director Harry von den Stemmen and mentioned it. Harry was suitably impressed, and then discussed it with Robe's CEO Josef Valchar who is deeply involved in all Robe's product development.
Robe decided to run with the idea and less than nine months later, the Robe designers had worked their magic and Scott was looking at the fixture.
The Cyclone's LEDs have a zoom of 8 to 63 degrees and a strong central airflow can be combined with fog and haze for awesome high quality atmospheric effects.
In addition to that ... "It looks really, really cool," says Warner who will soon be taking delivery of several Cyclones and using them on the Smokey Robinson tour amongst others.
(Jim Evans)
