Green Ginger 12 channel dimmer identification

[Junior8]

So have I got this right. All three wallpacks are working but only two appear to have power feeds through industrial types one labelled 1-4 the other 5-8? Is the other plugged into the twin gang 13A flying lead on the floor? Edited September 16, 2019 by Junior8

[sandall]

....... only two appear to have power feeds through industrial types one labelled 1-4 the other 5-8? Is the other plugged into the twin gang 13A flying lead on the floor?

The (fairly thick) cable from the RH 13A plug takes the same route behind the dimmers as the 2 bits of T&E from the 16(?)A plugs, so presumably so, in which case somewhere at the other end of the coiled cable is a 13A plug which has been pulled out, switched off or blown its fuse. I wonder what protection feeds the 2 cooker switches?

As White Light "serviced" it all in 2012 it might be worth a call to their service dept to see if they have any paperwork on file.

[Junior8]

This whole installation looks odd. Quite why they selected Wallpacks which needed a hard wired patch panel - using 5A IEC sockets moreover - when there were better solutions available off the shelf is a mystery. I wonder who's used T&E into the industrial types which should maybe have something a bit more up to the job than a cooker switch with no protection. Then to carve up the side panel of the bottom wallpack to install the three analogue control sockets makes no sense.

 

The OP may be able to get it all working but it will still look and indeed be a bit of a lash-up.

[sandall]

TBF I've met some pretty insanitary installations in local authority halls. Never met an IEC patch for lighting though, but it looks well-made, with chunky cables, & I suspect the moulded connectors will be 10A. Probably thought to be safer than round-pin connectors for a school rig.

[themadhippy]

should maybe have something a bit more up to the job than a cooker switch with no protection.

were are you getting the no protection from? the op has already mentioned there's circuit breakers protecting the outlets

a tripped circuit breaker

And there not cooker switches,there 45A double pole switches,perfectly fine for this purpose.

[sram]

To clarify: The only power cables that feed the dimmers are from the two blue 16a industrial connectors. Any other power cables you see, extension leads, 13a sockets etc are just for charging batteries and the like – nothing to do with the lighting system. Definitely only two power cables going into the rack. I've traced these both back to the cooker switches and then each of these is fed by two beefy cables which go back to the consumer unit.

 

Giving White Light a ring is a very good idea!

[bruce]

What’s the white cable with 13A plug on it, plugged into the right hand socket on the extension board? The other end appears to go to the back of the racks, alongside the 2x white T&E cables feeding the upper racks.

 

Does that extension board have power?

IS the fuse on the 13A plug OK?

 

 

Take more photos.

[sandall]

Green Ginger were unusual in making 4-channel installation dimmer packs - the UK norm was, & still is, 6-way, so I'm wondering whether this was a replacement (new or 2nd-hand) for an earlier 2x 6-way installation, such as 2x Strand Tempus, which would explain why there are only 2 C17 sockets (perhaps also later additions? - I can't remember when C17s started to appear everywhere). The rather neat IEC patch & screw-in fuses might have seemed a lot safer for little fingers than unshielded 5A sockets, easily-broken fuse-carriers (possibly wired with any bit of fuse-wire that came to hand) & the usual rats-nest of PVC cables & broken Bakelite plugs.

[Junior8]

Interesting thought. When Furse were dominating the schools market they introduced a patch panel using Bulgin plugs that went alongside their modular dimmerstrip product. Prior to that their small resistance boards - a rather less well built version of the Junior 8 - used normal 5A as did Strand. In my experience in the 1960s and early 70s in schools these boards were always hard wired into a local fused breaker and it wasn't until the modular thyristor product came along that any thought was given to having them served by local plugs and sockets for mains input. I think it was the portability that led to the change. Funnily enough I don't think the unshielded plugtops were ever seen as a risk per se since in those days pupils were very rarely allowed anywhere near the equipment but you are right about the pre-rubber versions. What worried the local electrical inspector here was the increasing freedom of schools through the devolving of budgets to them to buy their own lanterns without his supervision and the increasing availability of reasonably cheap 1KW lanterns as opposed to the previous typical 500W which had almost automatically given some protection against overloading small basic systems. Interestingly when Pulsar did a 6 way with IEC sockets it was not recommended in my area due to the need to re-wire any 5A patch panels. BTW when specifying a new studio theatre as late as 1990 I was looked at very askance for demanding 15A as standard in a school instalation. Edited September 17, 2019 by Junior8

[Robin D]

Never met an IEC patch for lighting

I know of two, both in schools, one of which was 26 years ago on a Furse hardwired system that was old then. The patch was lovely to use and easy to trace or untangle flying cables. Much easier than 5A or 15A.

[J Pearce]

The Pulsar dimmers came with IEC as an option. They were popular in Bedfordshire schools, with matching IEC patchbay.

[sandall]

When Furse were dominating the schools market ..........

I'd forgotten about Furze - I've only met complete racks. They used their own digital protocol, FMX. When someone nicked the desk out of a local town hall some time in the 1990s (presumably in the belief that as it had faders it must be a sound mixer) the in-house electricians replaced it with a Sirius-48, which was so big it had to stay up on the lighting perch, but they then found that 1/3 of the channels worked normally, 1/3 didn't work at all & the rest were intermittent. A few dead triacs added further confusion. Fortunately there were still people about who remembered the racks, so I managed to replace all the appropriate links to get it up & running on DMX. Most of the FoH lights were 1kW Furze spots & fresnels, which gave the equivalent light output of a rather dim Patt.23. When I later replaced everything I put the Sirius on a trolley, & it's still going.

 

E2A: I did hang on to the Furze racks in the hope of using them to replace a Strand JP system in another of their halls (like the Green Gingers they were really simple & easy to maintain), but the then manager was too tight-fisted to spend money on anything that wasn't absolutely safety-critical, so they just gathered dust until the hall closed for good.

 

Back to the OP - are you quite sure that the bottom rack isn't powered from the RH 13A plug in your photos? The only other possibility is that the flat T&E cable to pack 2 is looped to pack 3, in which case when channels 5-8 work so should channels 9-12.

 

 

Edited September 17, 2019 by sandall

[timsabre]

I'd forgotten about Furze - I've only met complete racks. They used their own digital protocol, FMX.

To be totally correct FMX was an analogue multiplex protocol very similar to Strand's D52.