Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Pneumatic Tube Systems

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Posted by Andrew McCrea (Member # 674) on 09-11-2005, 12:21 PM:

Do any of you use a pneumatic tube system to drop large bills and skim tills to prevent transporting money through the lobby?

Do these work well? Do any of the pipes run under the building instead of up and through the rafters?

Posted by John McConnel (Member # 2000) on 09-11-2005, 03:06 PM:

Last week I saw a pipe extending out of the floor of a new 8-screen theatre that's in its intital stages of construction in a suburb of Tulsa, OK. The pneumatic tube idea popped into my head, and I asked the owner if that was what it was for. But he said no, it was just a floor drain.

Posted by Brian Hogan (Member # 940) on 09-11-2005, 08:28 PM:

these tube systems are good to have when you have a separate box office and/or satalite concession stands. takes the worry out of the cash pulls when the alternative is walking across a huge lobby filled with hundreds of people. tube systems are a pretty customized job depending on the building and is best laid while the building is being constructed, rather than after. i have seen systems in which the tubes run in the ceiling as well as in the floor.

the most common breakdown they have is when a fan motor gets burned out. its not an overy difficult job to replace them however.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 09-11-2005, 08:46 PM:

Air Link International pneumatic tube systems

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 09-11-2005, 08:57 PM:

Cinemark 17 in Springfield OR has them, probably because the box offices are quite a distance from the regular office area. I don't recall seeing them using the tubes recently, but they definitely used it when the place first opened in 1999.

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 09-11-2005, 09:54 PM:

We use Comco Systems

Posted by Chase Hanson (Member # 2779) on 09-12-2005, 02:31 AM:

Yes, we use an Airlink Point to Point system to connect Concessions and Box Office to our vault/clean room.

Posted by Wolff King Morrow (Member # 2226) on 09-12-2005, 02:38 AM:

I used to work at a UA that had air tubes going from both concession and box office to the manager's office upstairs. You could send drops up them to the manager's office to avoid walking around the lobby with money in your hands. Really nifty.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 09-15-2005, 09:33 AM:

I've always thought these would be ideal for drive-ins, since the boxoffice is usually several hundred feet away, but I couldn't find one big enough to ride in.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 09-15-2005, 02:48 PM:

Maybe you could buy the flush one they had in MIB II.

Then again, you could do like one drive-in owner I know that drives his truck between the concession stand and box office every night.

Posted by David Yauch (Member # 2754) on 09-21-2005, 06:07 PM:

Airlink sucks.

The product is all right(probably only 4-5 calls a year so far, but this is a new building), but the customer service is horrible. Just hope you never need a replacement part, because there is always a chance that they'll send the wrong one three times over the span of a month and a half before getting it right. And getting someone to install will probably another half a decade. Don't worry though, you can always speak to a service manager, as long as you are fine with speaking into an answering machine several times to get a call back.

If you can find an alternative to airlink, use it. It can't get much worse than what I've seen.