For 20 years HOF Alutec has provided excellent solutions for stage construction. With a team of statics, technical draftsmen, designers, engineers, TÜV-certified welders and specialists in the field of manufacturing, the company accompanies its projects from the beginning to the end. We talked about the plans for Prolight + Sound 2017 with founder and managing director Hans-Wilhelm Flegel.
1. Customers appreciate German quality production. What are your customers particularly interested concerning your products?
Our stage roofs are a good example. For many HOF stage roofs, the customer has the option of using predominantly the same material, e.g. for 12x10m, 14x12m, or 16x12m stage area to roof. Or take our Excellent Line: With this tripod series, the customer can record loudspeakers, spotlights, projectors, screens or similar with almost the same material. There is, of course, a lot of development work in it, but we believe that in the end that process often makes the difference.
2. When implementing projects, your are not afraid of tricky prerequisites. What was one of the biggest hurdles?
I don’t even have to think that far. The project “video cube Schalke” is probably still very present in the heads of the HOF employees. The new video cube was supposed to be approx. 30% larger than the old one, but keep the same weight. By the way, we are talking about a total weight of approx. 30 tons. That alone was a great challenge for our engineers and stress analysts. In addition, we had a limited time window of four months – from receiving the commission to final assembly, which is extremely tight for such a construction. We shouldn’t forget that other projects and the “normal production” in our company had to carry on. Even the assembly at the location in the Veltins Area of Schalke was very tight at a mere six days. Here we would like to give a round of applause for our assembly team for being done a day early.
3. How many times have you been an exhibitor at Prolight + Sound?
We’re here with our own stand for the 6th time. Before that, we regularly operated a shared stand with our cooperation partners. There are many reasons to participate at Prolight + Sound. On the one hand, it is one of the most, if not the most important trade fairs of the industry. On the other hand, we distributors just love to talk to our clients “face to face” and not just the usual telephone or Skype interaction. Finally, the HOF brand itself is naturally strengthened by a trade fair appearance.
4. Looking forward to Prolight + Sound 2017: can you give the visitors a small hint of what they can expect?
Oh yes, this year we bring along three new products and also a couple ‘evergreens’ that are always in demand with the customers.
But now to the innovations we as HOF are presenting at Prolight + Sound: on the one hand, our Excellent Line Alpha series. The Excellent Line itself has already been around for three years as a design tripod for spotlights, various loud speakers, projectors, screens, etc. Within the Alpha series we developed a tripod on the basis of the Excellent Line that is especially for d&b users. Here as well, we should note that the material purchased can be implemented universally, meaning that, for instance, the loud speakers from the series E, T, Q, Y and V can be positioned as line source as well as point source.
Here, too, care has been taken to use the purchased material universally. Thus for example the loudspeakers of series E, T, Q, Y and V can be positioned both as line source and as point source.
HOF Alutecs XOOP Lightning F720
We also present the F720 from our house brand XOOP Lighting. This is a beam for exhibitions with 720 W LED power for the illumination of larger booths. The F-series can also be used by small to medium-sized exhibition booths as we also offer the spotlight in 50W, 100W, 150W, 200W, 240W, 360W and 480W versions. Each performance class is available in warm white as well as cold white. Philips LEDs and Meanwell power supplies were installed. In order to meet the requirements of the “universally applicable” concept, the F series has an IP65 degree of protection and is therefore also suitable for outdoor use, for example it can be used for object lighting.
Finally, we present our HOF Quixxx system. A truss quick connector system, which we presented as a study in 2016 and which is now in the final production version. Here the Hof Quixxx trusses are almost silently, without a hammer and extremely fast connected. A real innovation on the traverse market, since often the typical “traversing” is not possible due to the volume (for example in hotels, congress rooms, at night, etc.).
We are looking forward to numerous visitors at our booth Hall 3.0 Stand A44 at Prolight & Sound.
Picture above: Matthias Wellmeyer von der HOF Alutec Metallverarbeitungs GmbH & Co.KG aus Mettingen
