Hi folks

Need a bit of help with this one and I'll be as brief as possible.

My current show includes the following lighting:

4 x super leo
2 x super scimitar
2 x evl spins
1 evl strobe
1 njd sword
epod for spins and strobe, and hand remote for leo's and spins.
plus controller to switch power on/off for all lighting.

All lighting is hung on an overhead hardwired gantry, just plug and play.

The problem I'm having is with my 2 leos. Any time I switch the Leos on via the main controller (not the remote), the triac blows for that channel. This has happened with two separate controllers.

I don't want to have to go back to plugging lights straight into mains as it defeats the object of having a hardwired gantry. All other lights work fne and even when the triac is blown, the leos still work as the power to that channel is in a permanently "on" state.

Any ideas of how I can overcome this problem? Should I be using a diffeent controller?

Cheers folks
Darren

Okay when using a controller, make sure that you work out the rating of the connected load for any one channel. Most controllers will need to be de-rated by around 25% for any inductive loads. (An inductive load is anything which uses a transformer or ballast inside it, so basically, if your lighting effect uses 12, 15 or 24 volt lamps then you can assume that it will present an inductive load onto your controller).

You also need to take into consideration, that any lighting effect will have a surge current. This is usually 2 - 3 times the running current of the effect, so if your effect draws 2A continuous, then you could assume a 5A surge current. Multiply this by the number of effects connected and you could have a surge current at switch on of around 10A. On a 5A triac, this initial surge could be enough to blow it.

There are two things that you can do:-

(1) Replace the controller with one that can switch a higher rated load

(2) Replace the triac with one from the same series, which has a higher switching capacity. This is NOT an excuse to increase the load capacity since you could damage the pcb tracks, but an excercise to cope with the switch on surge that is presented to that particular channel. If you let me know the triac part # then I can tell you which one to fit.

You could also try switching each channel on individually at switch on, rather than switching on the controller with all of the individual channels already in the "on" position. This will limit the total surge through the unit.

The fact that they're called "Super Leo" rather than just "Leo" does suggest that the bulb might be brighter than the original, ordinary Leo. In fact, a quick look up on the Intenet shows its a 24V/250watt bulb...so your controller channel is seeing a load of 500watts + transformer (adding 25% like Chris said...adds another 125 watts) So, 625 watts plus power up surge.

Remember too than many of these DMX/linkable units often have a "ALL GO" moment on power up, where the Gobo wheel, the colour wheel, and Pan/Tilt motors, all spin, as well as the lamp coming on, and the fan powering up... etc....

Poor controller.

I think that you'd be better off running the Super Leo's on a seperate power source, or maybe only 1 per channel on the controller... however... you'll need to experiment whether the Master or Slave Super Leo needs to be powered up first, before the others. I found that my own Master/Slave units sometimes wont Sync if powered up in the wrong order.

Hi folks

Thanks for the suggestions thus far, makes sense, at least it would if I were a techie *smile*

Ok I'm not sure if you've seen the ultimax Multi-bar, so I'll explain how it's set up.

It's a 9ft bar that folds in half. Each side has 2 x 4 IEC and 2 x 2 Bulgin sockets.

So I come out from the bulgin out on my controller and into the far right bulgin on the bar. It's then a case of daisey chaining the lights, depending on how I want them set up.

eg, Super Leo go in socket 1 of each section of the bar, so the Leo's are using one channel on the controller, Scimitars in socket 2 on two sections of the bar and switchable on channel 2 of the controller. So it's not possible to have the Leo's using separate channels on the controller.

I'd switch over to just using a gantry without hard wiring, but it's meant to save me time and keep wires tidy, which it does all things being equal.

I'll look into a controller with a toughened resistance to the surge thing *grin*

Thanks again
Darren