General information about Cakes
Calibre: cakes generally range from 1/2″ to 2″.
Altitude: smaller cakes will reach heights of approximately 80ft, while larger types can reach up to 200ft.
General info: cakes are without doubt the most widely used fireworks in the majority of displays. Cakes consist of a number of single shot fireworks fused together. The shots can be comets, bombettes, mines or a mixture of all three! Cakes can range from 19 shots up to nearly 1000 shots and can last from less than 5 seconds to several minues, and anything in between!
Types of Cakes
Straight firing cakes: as the name suggests, the shots are fired vertically up into the air, one after the other.
Fanned cakes: the tubes are arranged in a fan formation which can be as wide as 45 degrees from vertical, so one fireweork can seemingly fill a large part of the sky. each fan of tubes fires simultaneously and the effect combinations are pretty much endless!
Z-shape cakes: similar to fanned cakes but the effects fire sequentially from left to right and then back again. There’s a very small delay between each shot so the effect seems to ripple back and forth, creating a windscreen wiper effect across the sky.
C-shape cakes: similar to fanned cakes but the effects fire from the centre of the cake outwards, with each “run” creating a c-shape of stars in the sky.
W-shape cakes: a typical w-shape cake will fire the same effect to the left and right, with a complementary or contrasting effect fired straight up between them to create the w shape.
V-shape cakes: very similar to w-shape cakes but without the central vertical element, hence creating a v shape.