DSA Posted April 13, 2004 Share Posted April 13, 2004 Hi, Something I have never really thought about - but how many amps will an 'average' mover take up? - its easy enough to work out with generics - but how does one know with movers. Say a mac 500?? I know it is likely to have a 16A ceeform connector? But hypothetically how many could one theoretically pull off a 32A ring main?? (assuming no tea urns or whatever left on!) David EDIT: Should have spotted that on the specs....! OK so its 4.1A - thats quite a lot really - only 7 on a 32A feed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted April 13, 2004 Share Posted April 13, 2004 David, Most manufacturers post the total pull of their movers in the manual or technicial specs on the website. The easiest thing I do is work out how much the Lamp will pull (so a 250w lamp would be 1.1A) and then add another 1A-2A on for the electronics of the mover etc. I think the Mac 500s are about 3.5A at 240v Don't forget that any discharge source will spike when the lamp strikes and therefore pull more Amps. So if you've got 4 Mac 500s to the 16amp feed, running at just under 16A you won't have any headroom for the striking for the lamps. You can set them to strike by DMX address, but wether the last one striking would take you over 16A I couldn't say... HTH Stu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSA Posted April 13, 2004 Author Share Posted April 13, 2004 Don't forget that any discharge source will spike when the lamp strikes and therefore pull more Amps.Good point - How much of a spike is normal?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris512 Posted April 13, 2004 Share Posted April 13, 2004 I've usually found that when you strike you can easily double what the unit draws when it is usually running eg: if your mac (other moving lights avaliable ** laughs out loud **) is drawing 2 amp whilst running I usually expect it to draw 4 amps when it strikes, to give me a little head room to make sure I dont trip out any circuits. a great feature I found in martin lightjockey was the built in tool for auto-strike in which it went through the rig and struck each unit one at a time, this makes it much safer (unless you have really over loaded your circuit ;) ) as your only striking 1 at a time and not large amounts of units Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vinny baby Posted April 13, 2004 Share Posted April 13, 2004 yep I have encouted places where they strike all there lamps at the same time, and they have had problems, I always strike my heads 1 at a time, to save these problems. I have been quite clever with my programming on my console (Q Commander) as I have created a chase that strikes all the lamps at 7 second intervals, this chase runs as soon as I select it from the main menu, once the lamps are stiked via DMX. the lamp will not turn off untill I select the 'Off' Scene. Most movers list how much ampage they draw on the back of the unit (I know that mine (Robe) state it on the back pannel, and also you can access the info via the LCD display). vince Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robloxley Posted April 13, 2004 Share Posted April 13, 2004 Current anywhere from 1.5 to twice normal running current, as a ballpark figure. It depends on the lamp, ballast, control gear etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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