NEW YORK – J.R. Clancy was tapped for a once in a lifetime challenge: creating a custom beacon that would shine atop the new One World Trade Center tower in lower Manhattan. The energy-efficient LED beacon is made up of 16 suitcase-sized petals, each containing 11 modules of LED lights. The bottom petals each contain 22 LED modules. Each module produces 1,200 lumens, for a cumulative total of 316,800 lumens—a light that will be seen easily from Manhattan to New Jersey, even on a foggy night.
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NEW YORK – Building one of the brightest beacons in the world—the one that will shine from the top of the new One World Trade Center tower in lower Manhattan—is a challenge that comes around once in a lifetime.
For the engineering and manufacturing teams at J. R. Clancy, Inc., however, once-in-a-lifetime jobs come around on a regular basis. That’s why the company rose to the top of the must-hire list when Ballantyne Strong, the entertainment lighting and projection system company, was selected to create the beacon.
Strong worked closely with lighting designer Claude Engel through the preliminary phases of the project. “Clancy was always the first choice because they had been world renowned for their expertise on custom fixtures,” said Glen Thor, director of Strong Lighting. “Mike Murphy, Clancy’s president, and Strong’s engineering team got together on the project over the next 13 months of engineering work, and we were able to get it to the finish line in less than half that time.”
The energy-efficient beacon shines at 1,740 feet above the streets of New York, just below the 1,776-foot total height of the new tower. “The antenna structure is approximately 400 feet tall, and consists of 18 separate segments,” explained Tom Trytek, P.E. of TDK Engineering, the firm Clancy chose as its partner in completing the project. “Our component, the beacon, is in the last segment.”
The light itself is made up of 16 suitcase-sized petals, each containing 11 modules of LED lights. The bottom petals each contain an array of 22 LED modules. Each module produces 1,200 lumens on its own, for a cumulative total of 316,800 lumens—a light that will be seen easily from Manhattan to New Jersey, even on a foggy night.
The petal array lives in a stainless steel structure with large mirrors located between the LED modules to maximize and direct the light across the city, said Bridget Cox, J. R. Clancy director of project management.
“The ‘mirrors’ themselves are not actually glass, but are specialized laminated assemblies of honeycomb board with a custom reflective aluminum surface,” she said. The light sources remain stationary, while the mirror assembly rotates on a small, motorized turntable. A computer supplied by Barbizon Lighting sends a signal to the J. R. Clancy motor control cabinet, turning the beacon turntable on every day an hour before dusk, and shutting it off an hour after sunrise.
The motorized turntable, mirror assemblies, and electrical components were built by a manufacturing team led by Clancy, with the assistance of Blair Construction and Fabrication in Auburn, NY. The team paid special attention to reducing the potential for maintenance and repair issues.
“The entire beacon is exposed to the elements, so it had to be designed to withstand New York City heat in the summer, cold in the winter, and precipitation,” said Cox. “There’s a special enamel paint treatment used for all of the parts that could not be made out of stainless steel. The stainless steel motor control cabinet can withstand the summer heat intrinsically, but if the temperature drops below 40 degrees, internal heaters kick on to keep the control components at a relatively constant temperature. The turntable motors are also equipped with heaters to help avoid condensation.”
The fact that this beacon lives above 1,700 feet required the design team to think through every aspect of maintenance and repair.
Clancy and TDK examined every aspect of the original design to determine the best ways to simplify and ruggedize the structure, reducing the likelihood of a mechanical breakdown.
Just to be safe, though, Clancy built a second gear motor into the turntable to provide a redundant motor drive system, so the beacon would still operate in the event that one of the motors malfunctioned.
Even with all of these precautions, service personnel would need to access every part of the beacon for routine maintenance. “Through the center of the mirror system is an access ladder,” said Trytek. “Just above the beacon on the tower are four FAA lights, as well as a light at the very top of the antenna. So we had to be sure that a maintenance person could pass through without interfering with the mirror, to reach the lights at the top of the tower.”
While some of the mirror panels are fixed to the frame of the beacon housing, the center panels can be removed, “sort of like a leaf in a table,” Trytek explained. “Each of the leaves of the mirror system can be stored to the left and right sides of the mirror frame. So you have an unobstructed way to get to the upper and lower petals of the LED system.”
With the beacon soon to cast its light across Manhattan, Thor is quick to praise the expertise the Clancy team brought to the project. “Clancy’s role has been instrumental; we couldn’t have done it without them,” he said. “Between the three companies, there has been a personal level of trust and understanding. I trusted that they were doing the right thing, and that was the key for me.”
