When do you stop repairing? Time, money, patience, effort???

[paulears]

I decided it was about time to look at the pile of dead and faulty gear - mostly lighting. First thing was to avoid the old discharge movers - taken to bits before Covid and then sidelined, they're in bits, and I can't see any of the nuts, bolts, screws and stuff - so they'll be scrapped. It still left me with a pile of Chinese moving head washes - now 8 years old. Most common fault is no red. These are wired in two chains, so some have green, blue, white and half red, but most have no red at all. I suspect they lost one half first, then the other went too. There was one non-wash in the pile, a rotating bee eye still fixture, the first one of this type to have failed. I started on this and after finally getting all the screws out, there were two capacitors loose inside the case. Their leads were soldered, so it seemed odd they'd fallen out of the board. However, this was majorly frazzled - the PCB burnt and discoloured and it looks like it was hot enough to actually melt the solder, and being upside down, they fell out! I suspect that at some point, water had got inside. I don't know if pigeons and gulls wee, but based on the the outside, I suspect it had been a roost during covid close down, when the building was shut, but somebody left a window open and it became an aviary for a year. On the board, many of the wire links were completely corroded and near the capacitors there was the remains of some kind of device. Maybe an inductor, or possibly a small choke - I couldn't tell it crumbled away as I touched it and the board wasn't marked. If I can source a power supply that will fit, maybe it can be resurrected?

The washes all had similar faults - open circuit LEDs. Virtually all red, but there was one open circuit green. I took me 6 hours to dismantle two, and use one as a donor - the idea being to use it for parts. At the point I stopped, the best was Red, Green and half blue and half white. Desoldering the faulty 8 leg devices, due to my less than good skills lifting the legs from the pads, mean that the chips from the donor needed jumpers to link across to the next device when the copper pads lifted. It was really thin and fragile. 

I've been looking at the time taken to get the things apart, source the spares and fit them, then do a test on each DMX channel. If I use my day rate fixing these things is out of proportion to their value. 

 

Does anyone have a plan they use for assessing repair or scrap. I really cannot afford in time, let alone money, to waste over a week on what is essentially old for a mover.

[sunray]

5 hours ago, paulears said:

I decided it was about time to look at the pile of dead and faulty gear - mostly lighting. First thing was to avoid the old discharge movers - taken to bits before Covid and then sidelined, they're in bits, and I can't see any of the nuts, bolts, screws and stuff - so they'll be scrapped. It still left me with a pile of Chinese moving head washes - now 8 years old. Most common fault is no red. These are wired in two chains, so some have green, blue, white and half red, but most have no red at all. I suspect they lost one half first, then the other went too. There was one non-wash in the pile, a rotating bee eye still fixture, the first one of this type to have failed. I started on this and after finally getting all the screws out, there were two capacitors loose inside the case. Their leads were soldered, so it seemed odd they'd fallen out of the board. However, this was majorly frazzled - the PCB burnt and discoloured and it looks like it was hot enough to actually melt the solder, and being upside down, they fell out! I suspect that at some point, water had got inside. I don't know if pigeons and gulls wee, but based on the the outside, I suspect it had been a roost during covid close down, when the building was shut, but somebody left a window open and it became an aviary for a year. On the board, many of the wire links were completely corroded and near the capacitors there was the remains of some kind of device. Maybe an inductor, or possibly a small choke - I couldn't tell it crumbled away as I touched it and the board wasn't marked. If I can source a power supply that will fit, maybe it can be resurrected?

The washes all had similar faults - open circuit LEDs. Virtually all red, but there was one open circuit green. I took me 6 hours to dismantle two, and use one as a donor - the idea being to use it for parts. At the point I stopped, the best was Red, Green and half blue and half white. Desoldering the faulty 8 leg devices, due to my less than good skills lifting the legs from the pads, mean that the chips from the donor needed jumpers to link across to the next device when the copper pads lifted. It was really thin and fragile. 

I've been looking at the time taken to get the things apart, source the spares and fit them, then do a test on each DMX channel. If I use my day rate fixing these things is out of proportion to their value. 

 

Does anyone have a plan they use for assessing repair or scrap. I really cannot afford in time, let alone money, to waste over a week on what is essentially old for a mover.

Unfortunately I share your pain.

I was brought up in the era of waste not want not, Even now I hate to throw away anything that is repairable.

A couple of years ago I purchased 4 PAR 56 Visage 7 tricolour LED units as faulty and found much the same as you; mostly red failures. Sourcing and fitting RGB 3W COBs  quickly discovered they are not all common layout and ended up with 2 fittings using each style. Not amazing lights but I use them most for lighting steps/corridors etc which they do well, total cost <£21 and about 3 hours of time (including destroying 7 new COBS).

Similar sort of thing with 7 PAR 64 Eurolite 156 10mm LEDs well under £40

3 slimline PAR64 156 10mm LEDs from a skip, total cost of a couple of pounds for LEDs and capacitors (16V in PSU running at 18V). I altered the way the audio sensitivity controls are mounted to prevent them being prone to damage and damaging the other fitting LEDs during storage/transport.

For ~£60 and possibly 10 hours it's 14 fittings which are vastly better in just about every respect than cheap chinese units at £20 (I have 4 and not yet found a use for them. Reputedly 54W but all 4 are nowhere near as bright as the 21W Visage).

Yes I know they are rubbish but eminently useful in the AmDram environment I'm in. Would I have paid for 10 hours of labour for them? No way.

 

[paulears]

Over the past few months, I've been working on a collection of old lighting - a sort of heritage project, and have discovered that apart from the very well known old British designs, there were also plenty of prototypes and modifications. We have this notion that certain products are clearly rubbish and others wonderful, but I'm realising now that it's actually always been this way. Terrible light sources and horrible controls. After seeing so many examples of these I've also discovered that repairs to some needed a level of engineering equipment that few people have now. I've seen some really lovely kit that is junk because it needs a lamp no longer available, or a new reflector that needs skills no longer with us. Focus mechanisms that require somebody to sand cast replacement parts - as you cannot 3D print something designed to run so hot. Swap a lamp type - not even to LED, and the whole magic vanishes. I've stuck LED into quite a few tungsten sources and none match the originals in any way.

Looking at my wash lights - I'm now trying to see if the original supplier has any complete LED panels that will fit - if they don't then it's the junk pile. 

Sunray's £60 plus ten hours for 14 working seems a good balance. I spent a couple of days last week putting powercon in and out on some plastic PARs and despite forgetting the length of the powercon would mess up certain angles (as in straight up), they were useful - until the box they were in fell off a case and half of them broke the yoke attachment point - but that's another story.

My cost is about £20 plus 12 hours for one! that's clearly not going to work. 

[ianknight]

It's a tough call and I don't have a hard & fast rule - it's really a sort of simultaneous equation using variables such as can the unit be replaced, is the unit really needed (or is it just 'nice' to have), are the parts available & how much time will be needed to fit the parts and get it working.

If the unit can't be replaced or it would be expensive to buy new then it's worth 3-4 hours effort if there's spares readily available i.e. in the workshop otherwise it's time to scrap the unit.

When I was selling LED fixtures for a living - the choice was the "Hari Kiri 24" fixture or the Clay Paky or SGM unit with a few hundred pounds between them - I always told the folks who couldn't afford the expensive option to open a savings account and put 1/3 of the price difference in that every year so they could replace the fixture when it inevitably stopped working & couldn't be repaired or buy 4 more than they need and leave them unopened to use as spares. My direct experience of the cheaper units was that they were built in batches using components surplus from other projects which is why finding replacement components after 2 years was so tricky - yes, we sold them but on the clear understanding they were sub £100 units (or what have you) and so were effectively disposable. 

If only the eco zealots realised how much of landfill was being filled with these scrap units & weren't being recycled then they wouldn't be so quick to get rid of tungsten (unless as the cynical voice inside is screaming now "it's all about the money!") 😛

[sleah]

1 hour ago, ianknight said:

If only the eco zealots realised how much of landfill was being filled with these scrap units & weren't being recycled then they wouldn't be so quick to get rid of tungsten (unless as the cynical voice inside is screaming now "it's all about the money!") 😛

Interesting that the older the theatrical type lantern, the more recyclable it is!

But it's more than just power usage that LED has advantages over. After using an LED rig, you'd hate the thought of going back to all tungsten - mainly due to colour.

Shame modern LED isn't more modular and standardised. If LED emitter engines and control units were plug'n'play there would be no need to scrap a complete unit when a LED engine fails (yes, I know some top end kit can have a replacement engine, but will a compatible one be available in 10 years?) or control circuits fail. Or be scrapped simply due to age and much brighter versions available with extra colours - how cool would it be to just upgrade the emitter engine and a PCB by plug'n'play to effectively create a new light!

Of course despite technical challenges it could be possible to fix a LED nearly as easily as changing a tungsten lamp, but "it's all about the money!" 🤔

The planet will have to wait a bit longer....

[musht]

3 hours ago, sleah said:

How cool would it be to just upgrade the emitter engine and a PCB by plug'n'play to effectively create a new light 

In commercial lighting there is the Zhaga set of standards

https://www.zhagastandard.org/

Kind of modern take on settling on lamp bases and shapes to allow compatibility.

Issue is speed of development, Lumileds Luxeon Star kind of set 350mA 1W LEDs as a format early on, then they came out with flip chip Rebel , had better thermal transfer but totally different mounting.

Like trying to buy an upgrade able PC mobo, by time want to upgrade processor, new ones have different socket.

 

[the kid]

I have been trying to start to implement at work that "if you cant do it send to someone who can"  which is easy for a company to say I guess. But we have cables that someone took the end off, or lights that need some lube on.  not MAJOR fixes but its still time and effort to fix. 

Units like yours, is it worth it? In the time you have fixed them all. would you have used them a few times ? would a week fixing mean that you get a year more? half ? Importantly are they missed ?  We have some old dimmers and PDU that need breakers fixing, but its been a year, we have lasted without them? Sure. Those 5 stands that need new wedges and feet that have been workshopped for 4 years ? its a few 100 in parts and labour but we never run out of stands.  

[Jivemaster]

Every one of us here knows of a PAT23 and a PARcan that's still intact, fully functionable and testable but the lamps are extinct. Now the integrated fittings mean that once the first few LEDs go out the whole thing is landfill. ALL in the name of eco friendly.

[kerry davies]

I am a follower of the Norman Clegg philosophy; "If at first you don't succeed pack it in." That then allows you to go and fail miserably at something else.

There is no serious answer to the question because, like so much on this forum, "it depends". I am quicker than most in packing it in to go do something different partly because if I didn't with my old crew they would never get a gig on let alone get one on on time. They would be creating away and getting stuff to work till it was time to go home. I was the same with sound checks, you have to draw a line where enough is sufficient and not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Where that line is depends on a raft of things starting with time but including finance, aesthetics, availability of alternatives, my mood etc. 

We all can and do spend totally unjustifiable amounts of time, money and emotional energy on getting some piece of kit to work to feel incredibly empowered when it does and then scrap it the  moment we switch it off. It's called being human.

[sandall]

My lighting kit is mostly tungsten, so repairable for ever, but I have a room full of kit I've bought, but never used in anger, built, but never used in anger, mixers that I could repair, but will never get around to doing so, various replay decks that could be repaired by throwing more money than they're worth at them, & amplifiers that even if I mended I would never trust in anger. My other half's solution would be to hire a skip. Maybe she has a point.

[Stuart91]

2 hours ago, kerry davies said:

I was the same with sound checks, you have to draw a line where enough is sufficient and not let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Haven't you realised that what you're supposed to do is spend 45 mins soundchecking the kick drum, then do a quick line check of the lead vocal 20secs before the doors open?

[indyld]

Working in repair in a hire environment, there are different stages. Highest first. 

- Under warranty. We don't repair but send it back. 

- Good, out of warranty. Keeping going and going out on regular hire. New parts available and used.

- Struggling. Still key inventory but long paid for itself, every day is a bonus payday. These units take the most repair resource. Use donors or new parts if cheap.

- Final repair before sell off. 

- Donors. Too knackered to sell or repair. Get lumped in with job lots on sale. 

Obviously being hire stock is not really cheapo to start with. I get through enough kit per day that even with parts, it's worth it for the company. Any time it isn't clear cut, we review while regarding the long term strategy with that line of kit. Also, modern kit isn't the kind of thing that can be tinkered with and buffed up. It takes range of diagnostic and surgical skills that a metal box with a cable doesn't. Even harvesting from donors is fairly specialist. 

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2023 by indyld

[indyld]

22 hours ago, the kid said:

I have been trying to start to implement at work that "if you cant do it send to someone who can"  which is easy for a company to say I guess. But we have cables that someone took the end off, or lights that need some lube on.  not MAJOR fixes but its still time and effort to fix. 

This is what myself and a few others I know deal in. Companies of even a reasonable size often have no one with the time or skill to do the repairs, but sending kit back to the makers service department is too much time or cost for a lot of stuff outside of warranty. I know that if one of us doesn't do the regular round for a few weeks, the kit piles up. Some simple things could be fixed in-house (like pickles, stands, or cables) but no one has the time to look at and order parts let alone fix them.

Other things are way beyond the general hire technician's skills in terms of diagnosing or fitting/testing. During the sections of the year that are the most busy, the number of days per round increases to keep up with demand on the kit that is in and out within a few days. Over the summer, I can spend two or three days per week keeping the repair pile sensible for just one company. The repair days coincide with kit returns, meaning some stuff comes off a truck and straight to me. Some things get tested in, given to me, then I send it for a restest before it goes into the next prep.

I can completely see how a one-man band would fairly soon be drowning in cheap Chinese LED Washlights.

LED replacement is particularly high in skill requirement and time to access. Also, if once you've fixed one that age group of fixtures start constantly falling over. Meaning you may be opening and closing the same fixture over end over. Sadly full engine / LED board replacement units are often very expensive. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by indyld

[Ynot]

I did a refit on some Stagg COB wash lights a few years ago. These weren't the cheapest LED kit around but certainly not top quality. We bought them as a reasonably budget option for a fixed rig of ten top-lights over stage and for a few years they performed well. However (and I suspect this was due to overheating as when I opened them up the fans were in various states of clog) several exhibited signs of discolouration compared to others. 

I decided to swap out all the COB chips, which was pretty fiddly, but doable. However, I believe the chips I got were the VERY last 12 to be found anywhere. And I mean anywhere. The manufacturer had changed the COB completely on the next model so nothing compatible was available.

Those Staggs are now relegated to either the skip in worst case to 'use if you want something basic and colour isn't a need'...