Speeding Up Martin RUSH Beams

The Martin RUSH MH3 Beam and MH4 Beam luminaires are powerful beam moving heads capable of producing an intense and narrow long-throw beam for spectacular mid-air looks and effects.  These types of looks are very popular on many stages and the Martin Rush fixtures are a perfect choice for any production.

When designing and programming with multiple beams in the air, sometimes it is desirable to have the fixtures move extremely fast.  While both the MH4 and MH3 units are very fast at changing pan/tilt values, you can actually make them move even faster when desired!

In the control channel of the fixture you will find a setting to change from the default movement speed to a faster movement speed.  When activated, the fixture will move much quicker than before.  If you are planning any slow movements, you may want to revert back to the normal or slow setting to avoid any steppiness.  Because the pan/tilt speed is an option in the control channel, you can easily toggle this as needed in your programming.



In the RUSH MH3 Beam, set the control channel (6) to the following DMX values:
DMX 50-59  Pan/Tilt Fast
DMX 60-69  Pan/Tilt Normal






 
In the RUSH MH4 Beam, set the control channel (13) to the following DMX values:
DMX 80-84  Pan/Tilt Normal
DMX 85-89  Pan/Tilt Fast
DMX 90-94  Pan/Tilt Slow 
Note that with the MH4 Beam that the fixture defaults to the fast setting.  Also it has a slow setting that is useful if you need extremely slow and smooth moves (greater than 1 minute from position to position).



Remember also that you need to ensure that your console's fixture library allows access to these control channel settings.  If you can not find these options, contact your console manufacturer for an updated fixture library.

M-Series Pro Tip: Create a Fanning Button

Fanning of parameters, effects, and time is a very powerful feature and the M-Series has a wonderful amount of tools to assist with fanning.  Be sure to read the M-Series User Manual for a full description of what is available.

I recently learned of a cool undocumented trick for fast access to fanning.  While the standard fanning abilities using the LCD/mini-touchscreen options are useful, I prefer a physical button that I can simply hold down while I adjust an attribute to create a basic fan.  This can be achieved easily by assigning the Fan function to an F-Key.

To set this up, first you will need to edit an F-Key.  Press and hold EDIT while also pressing the desired F-Key.  This will open the F-Key editor window.  On the top left, select "Command" then in the "Categories" column select "Channel Visualization".

The center of the screen will now display several options and you will want to select the last one labeled "Fan".  Press "Apply" on the bottom of the screen to accept this change.

One-handed fanning is possible as well!

Now anytime that you want to fan parameters of a fixture, simply select some fixtures, press and hold your F-Key and turn the desired parameter encoder (or track belt) to fan the parameter.  This works great to create basic position fans.  





If you wish to be more advanced, you can open the fanning screen to further adjust or change your fan type.  Or to be really cool, you can assign many of these fanning functions to other F-Keys as well.

Have fun fanning and customizing your M-Series controller.