Martin MX4 Scanners

[Oliver S]

Hey everyone...

 

I have pair of MX4 scanners that I have been using for a little while and just came back from repairs (long story) , one thing they did decide to do is replace the old ( still working ) bulbs with new shiny ones. Which is great. Now the question of mine is:

 

I want these lamps to last so I was reading through the MX4's manual and I already knew about the lamp on command and that their is a lamp off command....However I got a bit confused on how to send the lamp off command....The way I understood it, is that I have to put channel 2 & 3 to full and then put channel 1 to full for 5 secs.....

 

I want to do the lamp off command so that we don't just cut power to the fixture but that the lamp turns off properly...

 

So could anyone please tell me if I understood it correctly or if there is another way

 

Thanks a lot in advance

[johnhuson]

It should work fine, have you actually tried it? One thing to bear in mind is you will do more damage to your lamps if you turn them off for short periods (ie popping off for a cup of tea) as striking the lamp again is hard on the lamp.

 

What controller are you using?

[Oliver S]

I am using a martin 2518 controller....

 

It has the 6 faders....I have it set-up as 6 being move speed, 5&4 being PAN/TILT, 3&2 being gobos and color, and one being the standard one for turning on strobe music activation etc....

 

I usually just slide up fader 1 to the correct value for the lamps to start heating up, and then once they are bright and working I use them etc...and then what I used to do was just put fader 1 back to 0 , ( this making the lights turn of, but the actual scanner still has power)....so I thought that that might be bad for the lamps, which is why I wanted to use the sending of the " lamp off" command.

 

I did try doing this today and the lamps turned of after about 5-7secs.....Now I am just wondering if I must just keep on using the lamp off command or just slide fader 1 to 0 once I am done....