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Dimmable Pendant Lights?


Trigmg

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Hello All,

 

I've got two pendant lights (well two cords and lightbulb holders) that I have found in my office. One has a 13amp plug on it, the other has none.

 

Is it safe to add a 15amp plug to the other so I can hang it off my rig and dim it etc?

 

My main concern is there is no earth wire in it and I don't think I've ever rigged anything without one before! I assume it is because it is double insulated (class 2), but I wanted to throw the question out there in case I was missing anything obvious. Any advice on this appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance :D

 

Tracy

 

 

 

 

 

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Sorry if it was a painfully newbie question for a Friday morning :D

 

Not at all, someone once asked me to design a stage set with about 20 sets of fairy lights on it (back before the days of LED fairy lights) which they wanted to dim. I was convinced it wouldn't work but our old strand permus racks just did it no problem.

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Regarding the earthing question ... if the lampholder is metal (brass, chrome-plated, etc.) it'll have a terminal on the top section near the cable entry for an earth connection, and should be earthed. If it's plastic, no earth required.

 

Whether or not a pendant lamp is dimmable isn't dependent on the holder - it's the lamp that you put into it. Stick with old-fashioned incandescent, and you'll be fine (with the possible addition of a load lamp as stated above - although you quite often don't need to add one, I've just done a show with a couple of dozen 60w incandescent pendants driven from our aging STM and Permus racks and they were OK without an additional load). Any 'modern' lamp technology, though - LED, CFL, etc. - and you'll not be able to dim it.

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Regarding the earthing question ... if the lampholder is metal (brass, chrome-plated, etc.) it'll have a terminal on the top section near the cable entry for an earth connection, and should be earthed. If it's plastic, no earth required.

 

Thanks Gareth, it's a plastic holder so no issues there, it was more my own insecurity overriding my logical thinking! (That and the panic of potentially electrocuting students!) :D

 

 

 

 

I tested the light the other day and it all worked perfectly with an incandescent bulb, hooray!

 

 

 

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Not that it is a huge issue for use in a show but, at in a previous job, we found that the halogen substitutes for traditional filament light bulbs did not last as long as the inefficient lamps they replaced. This may have been because the house lights never went off completely and they spent most of the day at a low dimmed setting. Luckily they were easy to reach with a ladder unlike some of the other lights in the building.

 

The place gradually got dimmer as the EU reduced the availability of higher wattage bulbs.

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