Could a loose tranny cause this?

Andrew,
At this point I would recommend you give our service dept a call.
323-213-4555 this is the direct line to Gines. Service manager.
He is aware of your situation.
When you guys figure it out, maybe you can post the solution.

Best regards,

I have exactly the same problem with a two of my DS 575Es. I have 20 of them and only 2 exhibit the problem . All the spots are plugged into ETC dimmers parked at full. The two in question run fine without blowing fuses while sitting on their bases, but when I hang them upside down, they blow their fuses on start up..... some times. They will fire fine for a week or so then one day they will not. Also it does not seem to happen at the same place in the initialization cycle. Weird. ??

Hi Dano30 and welcome to the forums.

Your problem, most likely, is do to the fact that they are plugged into dimmers. You are lucky you are only losing fuses. Dimmers, even parked at full, still dim because they are still run power through the choke. Unless you have non-dim, switch, or Sine Wave modules, plugging them into dimmers isn't good for the fixtures.

For example, a theatre around here once rented 13 Mac 700s. Well, they plugged them into dimmers and then end up returning them early because 'they weren't working right'. Needless to say, when they got back to the rental shop, about half of them were fried. They ended up having to replace a bunch of internals. Now 700s use a lot more power then 575s, so might be why you are lucking out and only loosing fuses. My advice, get them off the dimmers ASAP.

Are we talking about Elation Design Spot 575LE's?

Intelligtent fixtures should NEVER be run through a dimmer, switching, relay or power pack. EVER. Intels have(or almost always) have a shutter, iris or an internal dimmer to cut off the light beam. On my Chauvet Q-Spot 150's, which are moving yoke fixtures, the bulb stays on, and I use a shutter to cut the light off. Knowing what I do now, I'm requiring a dimming function on all moving heads. I do not connect these to dimmer packs.

I agree with Serra Ava, as you're lucky all you're losing are fuses. You're super lucky you're not losing more of the electronics.

Listen to what Serra Ava is saying. Get them OFF dimmers completely. Your maintenance budget will thank you for not being used!

I finally figured out my problem. And yes it does have to do with being on dimmers. However in this case I put a scope on the dimmers out put and ran the dimmer to full. The trace was a perfect sine wave. Hmmmm. I left the dimmer parked at full and the scope on it then I ran up the dimmers around it (on the same raceway) and the trace got just plain ugly. Thats when I realized that there were 180 current carrying conductors jammed into a 4 inch raceway. The inductance being generated in there must be tremendous. I took the moving lamps in question off that raceway and plugged them to some circuits that weren't involved with that raceway. I parked the dimmers and used the moving lights for 16 hours without incident .Those lamps have been in their new location for 5 days and have done 3 shows without incident. Every so often I put the scope on the outputs just to reassure myself that I've still got a sine wave. Thank God that Elation had the good sense to protect their electronics properly. Thanks
Dan.