What do Draper and Wilt Chamberlain have in common? We’re both great at rebounding!
If you’re not familiar with basketball, a rebound is when someone grabs the basketball in the air after a missed shot.
On this day in 1960, Wilt Chamberlain grabbed 55 rebounds in a game, still an NBA record. Only four NBA players ever took 40 or more rebounds in a game. Chamberlain did it 15 times, and he holds the NBA record for rebounds per game.
Being a great rebounder takes timing, anticipation, being in the right position, aggressive pursuit, and desire. These are also some of the traits of a great innovator.
Here are four times Draper grabbed the rebound with an innovative solution.
StageScreen-Making Something Out of Nothing
Reynolds AV needed to provide a projection setup for the high school in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. There was a catch: the client wanted a wide 16:9 format screen, but had a height limitation of 15 feet. Owner Karl Reynolds’ first idea was to rent a portable rear projection screen from a national vendor, but then saw the quote. “I had to pick my jaw up off the floor,” Reynolds recalled. “With all of the freight associated, renting it was going to be as much as half the cost of purchasing the surface outright!”
Then Reynolds remembered he had two Draper StageScreens in his inventory. The modular nature of the StageScreen gave him the flexibility to make something out of nothing. Karl purchased a 26.5 foot rear projection surface from Draper, and built a new frame out of the pieces he had on hand. Reynolds saved money, and the StageScreen demonstrated its ROI. Click here to find what combinations you can make with the modular StageScreen.
Custom Shade Brackets for a Flex Solution
The Marina Heights construction project in Tempe, Arizona, was already long and complex. Taking in five buildings and 47 floors, the project involved a 19-month construction process. But that wasn’t all. As shade planning on the first building got underway, it was discovered that standard shade brackets wouldn’t work. Custom brackets were required to avoid impacting the moveable storefront, which was designed to flex with building movement. Attachments had to be made to horizontal mullions only, and they could not attach to vertical mullions.
Draper modified the bracket design using 3D graphics and even 3D printed brackets to make sure the new design would work. It did, and installation of the 8,600 shades was able to proceed. Click here to read the full story.
Draper Bends Sideways at Kennesaw State University
KSU was adding a gymnasium area to its Student Recreation Center. There are four 84-foot basketball courts, which also have overhead volleyball systems and an elevated track that is about 10 feet behind the face of the backboards. If that doesn’t already sound packed enough, there are also three Roll-Up Divider curtains. That is a lot of equipment in a relatively small area—and fitting it all in was especially challenging, Did we mention the 38-foot ceiling attachment height, which means that a typical straight mast would be about 29 feet tall and the backstops would hit the curtains when being raised?
Draper’s answer was to bring together a sideways bent stem and a side-folding backstop. This moved the top of the T-frame about nine feet off the center line of the court, allowing the backstops to fold without hitting the divider curtains. There was no compromise of function or safety, and KSU avoided the expensive pathway of starting from scratch to design totally new products and parts. Click here to learn more about our custom designed basketball equipment.
Helping UC Lab School Hit the Right Angles
The University of Chicago Lab School was building a new arts facility, the Gordon Parks Arts Hall. It was a high-profile project, making use of daylighting, but there was a problem. The facade design featured some unique angles and breaks in the glass, so finding a workable solar shading solution was proving difficult.
After some back-and-forth exchange of ideas and on-site meetings, Draper proposed a final design: a custom motorized shade system with tracks and re-directional rollers to help the shade fabric pass smoothly over the angles. Click here to read more about the project.
The next time you hit a snag on a project, give us a call or email and we’ll help you stop the ball from hitting the floor. Click here to go to our contact page.
