Pillars

Austin Thomas from Real Life Church in Mechanicsville, Maryland brings us these awesome LED pillars.

From Austin: We built the five Pillars out of 16’ 2x4s with 2’ 2x4s between making the final outside width of the Pillars about 2’ 3”. Each Pillar had five sections that can each be individually controlled. We ran cotton fabric up the back of each Pillar (stapled on to the wood) to create the backing for the light to shine on.

Before the Pillars were assembled I built a jig for my router that allowed the router to slide up and down the length of the 2x4s to cut in a channel for the LEDs. The 16’ pieces were routed on the side facing the inside of the structure while the middle 2’ 2x4s were routed on both sides.

LED tape was then glued around each of the five sections on each Pillar with hot glue, then sealed in with clear caulking to insure they never came out. RGB wiring was run up the side of each pillar to each section and stapled onto the wood and soldered to the LEDs (Five runs per Pillar). They were controlled by 24ch dmx decoders and QLC+ running on our lighting PC to drive the lights.

The Pillars were mounted to our stage truss at a pretty good angle as to tower over the band. We used hefty metal chains, eye hooks in the wood, and c links to attach the pillars safely to the truss.