Hey,
Our team wanted to purchase a field (with the lexan and such), but wanted to know if there was a way to get the elevated field stuff - the metal holding the field up. Do you sell that? is that allowed at regionals?
Thanks,
Mark
We built our own platfroms. There are no rules saying it is not allowed at regionals.
Depending on your budget SMC supply a fantastic product called ‘minitec’ that is very strong, easy to assemble and as it is made out of aluminium it is light. The heaviest part is the boards that the foam tiles sit on. Assembly and dissasembly is easy.
You can see the minitec website at http://www.minitec.de/index.php?id=1001&SESSID=vdngvlul
I would also be interested in the vendor IFI used to elevate the fields for elevation (no pun intended). The elevated fields were very strong and level at worlds.
IFI fabricated the elevated fields you saw at the larger tournaments (CoA, Worlds). IFI will not be selling the elevated fields. Sorry.
With some basic carpentry skills you could build your own, though, with 3/4" plywood and some simple legs and frames. My son’s school has folding chair risers like these: http://classroomfurniture.com/Hardboard_Deck_itemlist_43184.wws. You might ask around.
Good luck.
I’d be interested in hearing from (and maybe photos) of risers that people built. I went to the Atlantic Coast Championships and the supports were 1" plywood wrapped in metal with metal legs. They weighed a ton, but were able to support 3-4 people walking on them.
We had talked about building a set with 3/4" plywood and these folding leg sets The concern was how to keep the joints together.
Our other issue is that we hold three events, so they need to come apart and move to the next location.
I suppose hover balls only work in Garry’s Mod. Would have been the perfect solution!
Anywho, what about getting two of those white plastic tables that are used everywhere?
I would have to see how much weight these things can take, but with boards layed accross them they could work, maybe. Maybe I’m crazy, all depends on how much weight they can support.
I have attached SolidWorks files of our platform system we used up here in Maine. Please note that the large curved thing is a mockup of the stage we had to work with (half the field on, half the field off).
The platform is actually 9 smaller 4ft x 4ft sections that bolt together. The four corner sections have legs, while the middle ones do not. We had great success with them. Of course, as a precaution, only event staff were allowed up on the platform for safety reasons (just in case)
Two things to consider:
- we found this height to be a bit tall for middle school kids, we’ll be trimming ours 6 or 9 inches before the 2010 event
- if you use the plans, your mileage may vary, we never did any mechanical stress analysis on these things, so no guarantees on how much load/ beating they can take. We plan to check and re-enforce ours yearly as needed
Option 2.zip (2.1 MB)