Fresnel Strain relief

[Dustincoc]

6" Fresnels, I think they are Altman 65Q's but I could be wrong. No identifying writing on them, they are at least 30 years old. A couple of them have asbestos wiring that I'm replacing and none of them have strain relief on the unit end. I'm planning on using something similar to the strain reliefs from Altman for the 65Q but when I tighten the strain relief, It locks the spot/flood of the light by locking down the wires. I'd tried to tighten it at full flood but the excess wiring in the unit doesn't allow it to spot back. Any ideas on how to get it to work?

[mbandgeek]

We have some fresnels like that at my HS. Ours are stuck and do not allow us to change from flood to spot and vice versa.

You could put some form of high temp elastic (not sure what, but i am sure they make it) to allow movement, but pull the unused excess cable to the rear of the fixture when it's in the spot mode.

[ship]

Swag of the wires is difficult often on a Fresnel. Key is individual wires flexing as opposed to a banded pair. Got a whole series of Fresnels of the same type I wired about a year ago that I should get back to... same problem except I did dual wires in a sleeve and added a cord support to the reflector support for them so as to better cable manage. Didn't work so well in not being flexible enough.

While often you will find that new wiring will be a bit more stiff in going to flood even if properly done, there is certain aspects of it that need attention to doing it how it was done that might not have been this time. Stuff like the individual wires off to opposing sides of the reflector support gets really important.

Perhaps a bit more wire in the fixture is needed so it always has a curve trained to it, perhaps a bit less. Could depend on the type and gauge of wire and lots of things also.