Recent content by TJCornish

After reading it for the third time you may be right, however in any practical sense applicable in ControlBooth land, green better be ground, therefore the analog of 12/3 SO cord is 12/2 NM (not that I can think of many circumstances where it's OK to use NM cable in theater or production).

I am also curious about the VL2600 series fixtures. The feature list is pretty great - wide zoom range, good brightness, full features, etc., but after pretty poor luck with my VL770s and the fact that Vari-lite can't seem to be bothered to update their website (vari-lite.com goes to an old...

I highly doubt you will get an inspector to sign off on using two circuits on a 3-conductor SOOW assembly, even if in some circumstances the grounding conductor isn't needed. There is material risk of someone coming after you and making presumptions that the assembly is wired to code, and...

This is not the case, as a quick trip to any home supply store will prove. In portable cord, the grounding wire (green) is counted - e.g. 12/3 SOOW has 3 12-ga conductors - black, white, and green. The analogous NM cord is 12-2, where the grounding conductor is not counted - 12-2 NM has three...

I have just spent my weekend digging in the bowels of my Vari-lite VL770 fixtures. One has a power supply issue (powers on for about a minute then shuts off); the other had a cyan wheel issue. I was able to sort out the Cyan wheel issue - the oil that came in the bearings turned into a...

Lol. You may want to take a few seconds to actually look at the application before making a recommendation.

208v fixtures do not contribute to neutral current or triplen harmonics. This is indeed a good way to go. Balance phase loading as best you can and you’ll be fine.

No. What may be fine in a basement workshop is not fine for a public venue. Absolutely nothing you post here is acceptable to do.

For many venues, the energy savings of LED makes no sense, either. My church auditorium is lit 4 hours per week. It's pretty hard to make the financial case for LED at that usage level - some of our conventional lamps may last longer than the calendar life of some LED technology. :)

Agreed. The S4 series will be the last standing tungsten fixture family in the industry, and the fixture is upgradeable to a LED light engine with the Source4WRD, so existing inventories can expect decades more life. It seems likely to me that the next few years will see the prices of the...

12/3 of any cable jacket type is not suitable for 30-amp connectors. They are illegal cables as currently constructed.

The OP hasn't indicated that he has any fixed dimming infrastructure. I took this to be more of a portable setup rather than a fixed theater, but could be wrong.

I agree with the above. There's no practical way to limit the input current for the Smartpack (or any other dimmer) other than to use care when loading fixtures. Some power amplifiers can do what the OP is thinking which is automatically reducing the output of the amp to keep it under a...

Those are nice dimmers and are actually what I use, however they won't help the OP since they can't be directly powered by a L21-30 without downstream breakout distribution.

Even 8/5 is marginal according to that NEC table. 10/5 is not acceptable (though is sometimes used) - especially for sustained loads like lighting.