Damage to luminaires

[timsabre]

Our main theatre in Hull has recently been re-equipped with ETC racks which can be switched to hard power on any circuit. But it is very easy to make a mistake with the circuit numbers, especially if you've gone down a socapex, and run something off dimmed power when you thought you had set hard power. They have damaged several ETC lustr profiles due to running on dimmed power accidentally (though curiously the Mac Auras and Quantums they have seem immune).

 

I am not sure how you'd protect against this and still keep the flexibility of such a system. Proper show planning and documentation of the circuits to be used would help but get ins are nearly always done in a rush.

[Charlotte_R]

Our main theatre in Hull has recently been re-equipped with ETC racks which can be switched to hard power on any circuit. But it is very easy to make a mistake with the circuit numbers, especially if you've gone down a socapex, and run something off dimmed power when you thought you had set hard power. They have damaged several ETC lustr profiles due to running on dimmed power accidentally (though curiously the Mac Auras and Quantums they have seem immune).

 

I am not sure how you'd protect against this and still keep the flexibility of such a system. Proper show planning and documentation of the circuits to be used would help but get ins are nearly always done in a rush.

 

I sometimes work as a dimmer tech for production companies and I mix hot and dimmed power because I think that makes it easier on the trusses. I just make sure that I turn on all the hot power first and confirm that all of the intelligent fixtures are powered and none of the generics are before turning on the dimmed power. Surely that kind of protocol could be adopted?

I've worked in a few venues that have that system, but I've only done a little bit of cassying or been with the production and had a house tech so I've never personally had to do the changing over; but could you adopt a similar system?

 

[gyro_gearloose]

Would sine wave dimmers solve the problem of having dimmed and hard power on the same cable infrastructure? Not cheap, but presumably it won’t damaged electronic power supplies in intelligent fixtures?

[J Pearce]

At the shiny new Royal Birmingham Conservatoire building we have everything on 16A outlets, with Zero88 bypass dimmers, where a switch on the dimmer bypasses the triac.

 

As the house rigs are all LED we leave every circuit on hard power mode, then only switch to dim mode after we’ve rigged any extra tungsten units. Counting the tungstens go out makes it quite easy to see if you’ve picked up the wrong circuit.

Circuits are then restored to hard power on the getout.

[david.elsbury]

All well and good to leave them hot; but that’s one of the most likely times to pop a lamp; by slamming it on at full

[James Remo]

Bubbles are generally cheaper and easier to replace than ballasts / power supplies.

In rock and roll it’s not uncommon to have socca as : hot, dim, mixed hot/dim, motor power, motor control, mixed motor power/control (several standards) even noise boys use it for speaker runs. The potential for damage to equipment is much worse than feeding movers from dimmers, but the risk is mitigated by proper labelling and having and following plans. Personally I use a band of earth tape on socca ends to signify motor socca, a widely used technique.

When doing mixed hot / dim soccas on a patchable rack (such as an art 2k) I try to simplify the plug up, eg. Only using ways 5 & 6 on every socca as hot power. Even on a rushed corporate load in this can help avoid sending dimmed mains to fixtures, especially if you power up hot first to check your rig as mentioned above.

[J Pearce]

All well and good to leave them hot; but that’s one of the most likely times to pop a lamp; by slamming it on at full

 

It’s not been an issue yet actually, and if a lamp is getting weak I’d rather it pop on fitup when the bar is in than in the show.

As also pointed out lamps are cheap compared to Lustr power supplies.

[Jivemaster]

The OP's issue seems to stem from it being a mixed use building with several people "doing lights" and no-one understanding the system. Having different connectors for hard power and dimmed power could assist with some of this issue.

[Stuart91]

even noise boys use it for speaker runs.

 

Some analogue mixers even used soca for the link between the console and the PSU. (I vaguely remember Soundcraft Series 5?)

Thankfully in that scenario it'd be hard to mis-patch, but all the same...

 

It underlines the importance, as others have said, of labelling.

[Heptagon]

A subsidiary question - if that is OK.

 

The venue owners told me that the lighting contractors told them that the repairers told then that the lighting units logged the events that caused the trouble (This is the PLprofile1 and PlFresnel1), and that failure was definitely caused by the units being connected to a dimmed supply.

 

The more obvious cause (obvious to me as an ignorant old man) might have been related to the power supply to the theatre (notoriously noisy), the massive construction work next-door (inc welding), and the fact that the units are connected to the hot and spiky 24hrs per day. It is also noteworthy that the architectural led lighting on the outside of the building is constantly failing (sorry - don't know model numbers or details).

 

Any thoughts on how they can be certain that the first reason for failure is most likely?

[Don Allen]

You need to have a voltage monitor put on the incoming mains to log voltage levels, any spikes or outages. This should be done by the supply authority but they do not not like to admit liability. During construction works, you need a procedure put in place to isolate power to LED fixtures and anything else succeptible in your theatre. Try and contact the suppliers of the external LED fixtures as they would not like their product reputation being damages by poor mains and may offer you support or help organise mains voltage monitoring which needs to be logged.

[timsabre]

I am sure Selecon's technical dept (the manufacturer of those fixtures) would be able to give you more info on this story of fault logging in the fixture. It sounds highly unlikely that they could log an event which caused their psu to fail since they wouldn't be alive to log the event.

[DrV]

A subsidiary question - if that is OK.

 

The venue owners told me that the lighting contractors told them that the repairers told then that the lighting units logged the events that caused the trouble (This is the PLprofile1 and PlFresnel1), and that failure was definitely caused by the units being connected to a dimmed supply.

 

First you might like to ask them exactly how they extracted logged events from a device that doesn't log anything to do with the mains supply. The mains goes directly into the PSU and the PSU has only a 12 volt D.C. output so the rest of the fixture knows nothing about where its power is coming from. This sounds like someone trying to blind you with science.

 

The more obvious cause (obvious to me as an ignorant old man) might have been related to the power supply to the theatre (notoriously noisy), the massive construction work next-door (inc welding), and the fact that the units are connected to the hot and spiky 24hrs per day. It is also noteworthy that the architectural led lighting on the outside of the building is constantly failing (sorry - don't know model numbers or details).

 

Any thoughts on how they can be certain that the first reason for failure is most likely?

They can't and you're on exactly the right track.

[timmeh2]

I rarely come across 15a power at the moment. Most stuff I do is live events where everything is on 16s, or places with smart dimmers that can change between hard, dimmed, switched power etc. They're the tricky ones, I suppose, because they mean that a socket can be any kind of power and change from event to event.

 

Hi

 

Even Smart Dimmers cause issues; I had to deal with an install on a cruise ship that used (supposedly) pure-sine dimmers, that could be configured as hard power.

 

32 virtually brand-new, destroyed VL1000TSDs later, they decided it might not have been as good as they thought.

 

All the best

Timmeh

[indyld]

The brownouts or other nasties theory sounds a lot more plausible than the "dimmers were snuck into the system, fixtures abused, and then snuck out again" chain of events that would seem needed for the reported cause to have been possible in the situation.

 

I'm not clued up on the PL1 system logging but can imagine that number of power cycles along with lamp hours etc. is the most likely. Maybe the logs contained a very high number of cycles considering the fixtures age/situation?