Overhead Unistrut Support Structure Offers Strength and Ease of Adjustment

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Overhead support structures built using Unistrut channel feature a combination of strength and ease of adjustability.  At Unistrut Service Company, we do a fair number of support structures for medical applications (operating room lighting, X-ray and CT-scan equipment, etc.), and we regularly feature these installation stories on our TechTalk blog.  What you might not know is that the features that make Unistrut channel an ideal building material for medical applications—strength and ease of adjustment—carry over to other types of installations too.

Don Drumm’s hanging sculpture, "Garden of Fantasy", displayed in the main lobby of the Jean and Milton Cooper Cancer Center at Akron City Hospital is a case in point.  Unistrut Service Company designed and installed an overhead support structure to suspend Drumm’s 30-foot, 1,400-pound plate bronze and aluminum sculpture.

One might assume the primary concern here was ensuring that the overhead support structure had adequate strength to handle the load associated with the enormous sculpture, but this was only part of the challenge.  We also needed to design a support grid that would allow for easy movement of the sculpture to maximize the effects of the sunlight as it struck Drumm's masterpiece.

Unistrut Overhead Support Structure for Suspended Sculpture

Unistrut Overhead Support Structure for Suspended Sculpture

Achieving an ideal placement was done using a good, old-fashioned eye test.  Once suspended in the air, Drumm made incremental adjustments to the sculpture’s placement until he was pleased with the result.  Since the overhead support structure was built using Unistrut, Drumm’s changes were quick and easy to make despite the size and weight of the sculpture.

We completed this installation with the following:

Unistrut P1001 ChannelUnistrut P2786 Beam Clamps

Like most overhead support structures we fabricate and install, this particular installation required us to attach threaded rod to Unistrut Channel.  To learn more about this procedure, be sure to check out our blog post on this subject.

It is not uncommon to think of Unistrut as the contractor’s choice for industrial and commercial applications, but our clients are often surprised to learn that our strut shows up in some unusual places.  If you have you seen or used Unistrut for an interesting application, send us a picture so we can post your story in an upcoming edition of TechTalk.