Chasing Lights Movie Poster Frame

[Peter Meacham]

I am looking for a source of a "chasing" light frame that holds movie posters - and may have a marque of "Now Showing". By chasing light, I mean lights that seem to rotate around the outside of the frame; chasing each other - hope I have explained OK.

Anyone have a source - or better yet, plans to make such a sign.

Thanks, Pete

[Justin Leiwig]

there have been a few designs I've seen on the AVS forums.

[Tony Baideme]

Peter,

Back in the day, (boy am I going to date myself on this) we used motor driven cam operated multi contact flashers. These had four sets of contacts and four cams that were staggered to give the chasing effect. I will try to explain.

#1 would make contact and stay on,
#2 would make contact at 1/4 revolution after #1 and then stay on,
#3 would make contact at 1/2 revolution after #1 and then stay on,
#4 would make contact at 3/4 revolution after #1 and at the same time #1 would break contact and go off. Then they would repeat themselves.

In this sequence, three lights are on and in order, one light goes off as the last one comes on, giving the chasing motion. When this was system was wired into all lights on the border, there would be only four circuits.

I am sure there are new electronic chasing flashers available now. But the wiring schematic would be the same. These can be wired to run in opposing directions to bring the attention to a central point.

Hope this helps you. It's been quite a few years since I worked on the old movie theatre marquees.

Aloha, Tony