Control/Dimming Strand CD80 Dimmer Pack Block wiring diagram and DMX addressing issue

Fibredude

Member
Hi,
I am a parent volunteer at a public Middle school outside Boston assisting in there annual musical.
I have done lighting and sound for a community playhouse for years and have some knowledge of Dimmer theory and electrical repair.

Does anyone have access to a block wiring diagram for this model CD80?

The CD80 24x1.2Kw Dimmer packs the school have installed are Model 8327 mfg date 1994. This has the older style DMX control Board with the Thumb wheel address settings, red dip switch and clear bump buttons that I have been told indicate a Gen-2 version of the Control board.

After re-lamping their Altman 160 Fresnels and patching the Leprecon 624 board for default 1-1 DMX patch I ran up all the Dimmers that should activate Circuits 1-24. Circuits 9,14 and 18 would not light the associated Strip/Border lights via the board when connected to the Dimmer Pack when given a starting address of 001 on the Thumbwheel settings.
I re-addressed this pack to start with address 025 instead. Re did the patching on the Leprecon and all the circuits attached to this Dimmer pack could now be run up.

I moved the second Dimmer pack to DMX 001 start address and re-did the default patch 1-1 and ran the circuits back up. I now see that the same circuits 9,14 and 18 cannot be run up by the controller.
I used the Bump/Bypass buttons on the controller and found that I was able to turn on Circuit 14 but not able to turn it on using the Leprecon 624. This seems to indicate that the dimmer SSR is good on the Dimmer pack for this circuit but the control signal for address 14 seems to be getting propagated.
What is confusing me is whether it could be the Leprecon board itself but it seems very odd that individual addresses could be not operational.
Any suggestions/recommendations on how to further troubleshoot this is greatly appreciated....
I wish I had a spare dmx controller I could borrow to rule out or pin it back to the Leprecon624 board signal.

many thanks,
Pat
 
Based on the details of the description, it certainly sounds like the issue is with the Leprecon console and not the CD80 packs. My guess is that there is a patch error in the console such as a 0% profile, but I can't find that function in the manual.

If it were me, I would start by erasing the patch, which will default to 1:1, and check again to see if that clears out the memory. You might even want to clear and default all the functions of the 624 just to make sure there's not more junk in memory. It's a great way to know you are starting fresh.

I'm not going to recommend that you dig through the internals of the packs as I don't think the issue is there and it's not typically something that should be done without some good experience in product troubleshooting and repair....especially on a power panel.

Here are the deep clear instructions for the patch on the 624.

David

To erase the Custom Patch:
1) Press the Preset menu button in the upper left corner of the board. Repeat key press until the
"patch" LED is lighted.
2) Press the "down" arrow until the label "CL", indicating CLear, appears on the display. The red
record LED will begin to blink.
3) While the LED is blinking, press the "record" key.
4) While the display is blinking, press 'record' again to clear all presets.
5) The board will verify the operation by displaying “dE” (default
Erase) for a few seconds. The custom patch will now be initialized to a 1:1 patch for 24 dimmers.
 
Hi David, Thank you for your reply.
Prior to starting with the board I cleared all the Patch, Scene Memory, Stack Cue settings in the NVRAM of the Lep-624 following the instructions in the original manual and made sure I saw the CL and DE display so that it confirmed we were starting from scratch.
This is why the results for having a few circuits non operational that follow the board is odd. I think at this point I will have to wait until the school completes the run of the show before I continue trying to figure out where the issue originates. One approach I will try is to readdress the currently addressed 001 Dimmer pack to start with 049 and re-patch the Lep-624 to control the suspected circuits. If the circuits become operational using different starting address range I suppose it still remains a question of whether it is the Light Board DMX signal origination or something in the signal itself at the receiver end. If I had a DMX test rig I suppose I could quickly determine if it is the outbound board signal..
Pat
 

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