Introduction: Flown and ground-stacked LED screens look almost identical once they are switched on, yet they push their weight into completely different parts of a venue.
Picture a small corporate roadshow setting up in a hotel ballroom: a four-metre-wide screen, a low ceiling, a stage deck that was built that morning, and a crew deciding whether to hang the wall from a truss or build it up from the floor. Both options show the same picture. The difference is where the weight goes, who has to handle it, and what has to be checked before the first cabinet is lifted. Understanding those load paths makes the choice much less mysterious, and it explains why even a modest event still needs someone to look at the structure rather than just the screen.
In a flown setup, the cabinets lock edge to edge into a single wall, then bolt onto hanging bars or clamps that attach to the truss above. From there the load travels through the truss chords to the node points, into motor hooks or suspension points, and finally into the roof beams, ceiling structure or the truss towers themselves. That chain matters because the truss behaves like a beam: it has to carry bending across its span, not just the total weight of the screen, and a long span with a heavy wall in the middle is a very different problem from a short one. A ground-stacked wall sends its load in a much shorter direction. The cabinets sit on a ground support frame or base section, and the frame feet transfer the weight straight down into the deck, the stage platform or the venue floor slab. Because the finished wall is tall and relatively narrow, the setup also has to resist tipping, which is where ballast and base width come in. Cabinets designed for both roles make this switch easy at the hardware level: the R7 uses a die-cast aluminum cabinet with quick-lock edges, and the same boxes can be hung from truss or built up from the deck.
Small does not mean simple. A four-by-two-and-a-half-metre wall is still a serious amount of mass once cabinets, hanging bars, clamps and cabling are added, and small venues are often the least forgiving places to hang it: low ceilings, unknown fixing points above a ballroom's decorative panels, and temporary decks assembled by a different crew that morning. Treating a small event as automatically low-risk is how load problems get missed. The two conditions below are where most of the real thinking happens.
The number people remember is the screen weight, but the truss never carries only that. Hanging bars, clamps, cable bundles, a couple of moving lights sharing the same span and the occasional crew member leaning on the structure all add up, and the way the wall is distributed along the span changes how much bending the truss sees. A short span loaded near a node behaves very differently from a long span loaded in the middle. Industry guidance for temporary stage structures, such as the ESTA TSP documents, exists precisely because these decisions depend on span, point placement and the structure overhead, not on a single figure from a cabinet datasheet.
A stacked wall looks reassuring because nothing is hanging, but it creates a tall, narrow object that wants to tip. Ballast has to sit on the base in the right place and in sufficient quantity, base feet need to spread wide enough, and the deck underneath has to be flat and rated for the concentrated point loads under those feet. A temporary platform on legs, an uneven floor or a stack of decks left slightly proud of each other all change the picture. Crews also forget the human factor: people lean on screens, cable ramps push against the base, and a shutter door can send a gust straight at the wall. Ballast logic is about keeping the centre of gravity inside the base footprint under all of that, not just on a calm afternoon.
Flown walls move the work upward. Someone has to check the points, build or inspect the truss, hang motors, and run the wall up in a controlled way, usually with riggers who know the venue. The reward is floor space: the stage stays clear underneath, sightlines stay open, and the screen can float in front of a band or a speaker stack without eating depth. Ground stacking flips that trade. No overhead work is needed and the crew stays at floor level, which is often the deciding factor on a tight schedule, but the base and ballast occupy a metre or two of valuable stage depth and can block the front rows if the deck is low. The layout consequences go beyond the screen itself. A flown wall usually needs the truss to be part of the stage design from the start, because the towers or the roof structure determine where the screen can sit and how wide it can be. A stacked wall can be positioned more freely, but performers and presenters have to be kept away from the base, and masking has to deal with the frame and ballast boxes. Changeover time differs too: hanging is slower to install and faster to strike, while stacking is quicker to build but slower to clear. A rental stage led screen supplier normally delivers the cabinets, clamps, hanging bars and ground frame together, so the crew can decide which route the venue actually supports.
Flown and ground-stacked screens differ mainly in where the weight ends up: into truss, suspension points and the building overhead, or into a base frame, ballast and the deck. Neither route is automatically safer or better, and both are entirely workable for a small event once someone has looked at the truss span, the floor, the ballast and the crew access around the screen. The practical habit worth building is to choose the installation method after the venue has been read, not before. Load ratings, truss selection and ballast quantities for a specific room belong with qualified structural planning rather than a general explanation like this one.
A: The difference is the direction the weight travels. A flown screen is locked into a wall, clamped to a truss and suspended, so its load passes through the truss, the motors or suspension points and into the building structure or truss towers. A ground-stacked screen sits on a base frame on the deck, so its load goes down through the feet into the stage platform or floor, with ballast and base width handling the tipping forces.
A: They start at the cabinets, travel through the quick-lock edges and cabinet frames into hanging bars and clamps, then into the truss chords and node points. From there the load goes into motor hooks or suspension points and finally into the roof structure, ceiling beams or ground support towers. The truss carries bending across its span as well as the total weight, which is why span length and point placement matter.
A: Because the load does not scale down with the room. A four-metre wall of cabinets plus truss, clamps and cabling is still heavy, and small venues often have unknown fixing points, low ceilings and temporary decks. Truss capacity, floor loading under a stacked base and ballast placement all still apply, so a small event benefits from the same qualified structural review as a larger one.
IEC 60529:1989+AMD1:1999+AMD2:2013 CSV
