Powerspot 575 Fuse Issue

Welcome to the forums. Sorry your having trouble with these lights. give our service dept a call. the hours and times are listed on the main page of this forum. They should be able to help you out further.
Sincerely,

Hi Andrew,

Have you attempted to by pass the dimmer system.
Simply to check and see if you will get a different result.

You also mention that they were both working for 1 week, then started blowing the fuses.

Again try and plug them directly to power no dimmer and let me know the results.

I will try, however I am out of fuses at this point. (where can I get more?) I am positive the dimmers are supplying enough power however as they were running a 750 watt source 4. Also they were able to run our christmas eve program no problem (6 straight hours of running) and have since started the problem. I have heard the tranny can cause theses symptoms as well...

e-mail me an address I can mail them to you.
or go to your nearest electronic store.

look for an 8@ GMA style fuse. Maybe even radio shack.

John at elationlighting dot com

Ouch, red alert. Sorry I wasn't around tho read this earlier, working on stuff for the President right now. Anyway, YOU CAN NOT PLUG ANY MOVING LIGHT INTO A DIMMER, PERIOD.

I have explained the reasoning bhind this before on here. I will try and dig up the thread so you can read through it. Get those plugged into wall power as soon as you can, and don't ever run them again off a dimmer. Even though the dimmer is full on, it still butchers the power which in turn hurts the light. This is the reason the fuses are blowing. They are doing what they are there to do, protect the light.

Thanks Serra
I was able to talk with Andrew over the phone. We always recomend against installing intelligent lighting on dimmers however there are many customer who still believe it is ok.
I believe ETC makes power modules spefically for intels, but i'm not sure. I asked him to call ETC on that.

But, if you can find anything against installing on dimmers for our forum it would be awesome!

Thanks.

ETC does indeed make non-dim modules that are either constant on, or on/off only like a switch. The problem is the normal dimmers are very bad for movers and when he said on at full, that leads me to believe that dimmers in question aren't those types.

Will have to see if I can't dig up that thread.

Well I got them down and pugged into wall power, they still blew two fuses right off the bat but then have since stabilized out and I have turned them on several times without blowing the fuses... One has a pretty loud hum (much louder than the other one) once the lamp turns on. Guessing that is the transformer...

Correct. It is the transformer humming. I assume then that they are regular Power Spot 575s and not IEs? That is normal for magentic ballasts and shouldn't be cause for worry.

Here is the thread I was talking about before. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see me talking about dimmers and what makes them tick.

SerraAva - You said you shouldn't plug them into a dimmer pack but a switch. MOST dimmer pack can run in either dimmer or switch mode. so as long as it is in switch mode it should be fine.

I still wouldn't recommend doing that though, personally equipment like that I like to be plug into a power filter (well I don't have intelligent lights but thing like that) anything sensitive to voltage change use in a concert environment is best to plug in to a power filter.

Just because it has a switch mode doesn't mean that it bypasses the SCR and Choke in a dimmer. That is what causes the damage, and also acts as the switch. The sign wave is still effected even at 100% or on.

Technically though, a dimmer is never fully off. They all leak a volt or two.

As for a power filter for movers, not necessary. Most are electronic ballast now a days and can use any voltage from 90v-250v. Even magnetic ballasts can handle a slight range in power. If anything, you should power condition anything that is on the same circuit as a mover, same power leg in some cases. Lighting is very robust, its the video and audio guys that have the power issues . Roll this and ground hum that.

Ok, soo I pulled them down and plugged them. No problem. Re hung them and ran power from an outlet to them, powered on and ran the test fine, lamp attempted to come on....... Blown fuses. So it seems to be when the light is upside down is when it has issues. That eliminates the dimmer issue now.

More guesses?

That's a new one. Haven't heard of a light blowing fuses over being upside down. Maybe there is a loose connection somewhere in the light itself shorting something out and causing the fuses to break? When you set them down upright, it might have shifted the cause of the short and fixed the problem.

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.