Automated Fixtures Chauvet Finish turned Sticky!

JD

Well-Known Member
Store equipment for a while and you find new issues! In this case, I am having an issue with the black mat finish on my Chauvet fixtures. This may not be brand specific, but it has me scratching my head. It appears whatever was used to give the black plastic parts a mat finish has degenerated and become sticky while in storage. The fixtures work fine but are a pain to handle! I have tried various cleaners to remove the finish and glycerin based cleaners seem to work best, but before I rip everything apart I figured I would post this and make sure I am not reinventing the wheel! Anybody else have problems with black mat finishes on their fixtures turning sticky? If so, did you find what works best to clean them?
Thanks all!
-JD
 
Some years ago, Subaru had a batch of dashboards do that. They extended the warranty on them and replaced a bunch.
 
I've noticed, both here on Control Booth and on other sage lighting web sites, that there are many, many , MANY complaints and problems with lighting instruments and other hardware. Seems like the electronics are either very poorly designed or very poorly built. I managed an engineering office full of CAD machines for 20 years, up to 125 PCs a times plus a handful of servers, and in that time NEVER had a motherboard fail or a chip on a board fail. The most often occurring problems were with network cables or somebody dinking around with network settings or email settings on a workstation. All of our servers were using RAID drive arrays and I NEVER even had a hard drive fail. What kind of crap is in lighting hardware????

And I NEVER had the paint on a Century or Kliegl instrument turn "gummy," either. Can't these modern instrument manufacturers even paint things properly???
 
Apples and oranges.

LED and moving lights have sophisticated electronics working in a very hostile environment. PCs and server hardware is in a nice case with good air flow and a well protected and regulated supply. That's rather different than a tight case on a stage light that has minimal cooling, a space restricted power supply, and subjected to frequent bumps and bruises. Stage lights are a thermal nightmare for an electronics engineer.

PCs are very refined simply due to the fact that they are made in the millions. Electronics made in smaller quantities are generally less reliable than mass produced items, because the design defects don't show up as easily and they undergo less rigorous testing and redesign. Even high end broadcast equipment tends to be more trouble prone than say a Samsung TV.

Cost is obviously a factor, which is why there are $300 lights and $3,000 lights that do essentially the same job.

As for the finish, manufacturers of all sorts are having issues with the quality control of plastics. Several, major car manufacturers, including Toyota, recently had a batch of Denso fuel pumps failing simply because the plastic for the impeller wasn't mixed quite to spec. There were recalls because nothing is as much fun as having the engine suddenly stall on the highway. The fuel pumps came from an American factory.
 
I've had various issues with this on Elation gear. We have one Design Spot 250 that we were given and it came to us sticky. One time I was cleaning an Elation Show Designer console and whatever I was cleaning with turned the encoders all sticky -- oops; I take responsibility for that one. I was given an old audio rack by a friend/colleague and it had a Gemini CD player with a sticky jog wheel.

Seems like whatever type of plasti-dip-like coating doesn't respond well to certain cleaning agents, heat, time, just sitting there, etc... I imagine that the only way to reverse this is to remove the coating entirely and apply some flat black spray paint to the parts. Reminds me of all the yellow vintage computers out there, but this will take more than Retr0brite to undo.

I personally don't know why they're giving fixtures a rubberized-like coating. Dust sticks to it and it's not like it resists scratches any better than other coatings. It offers no discernable impact resistance. I can understand it on tactile surfaces like encoder wheels that should have a nice feel, but fixtures?
 
Isopropyl alcohol should help clean the gunk...
Some mixtures of plastic suffer polymer breakdown faster than others.
 
I've noticed, both here on Control Booth and on other sage lighting web sites, that there are many, many , MANY complaints and problems with lighting instruments and other hardware. Seems like the electronics are either very poorly designed or very poorly built. I managed an engineering office full of CAD machines for 20 years, up to 125 PCs a times plus a handful of servers, and in that time NEVER had a motherboard fail or a chip on a board fail. The most often occurring problems were with network cables or somebody dinking around with network settings or email settings on a workstation. All of our servers were using RAID drive arrays and I NEVER even had a hard drive fail. What kind of crap is in lighting hardware????

And I NEVER had the paint on a Century or Kliegl instrument turn "gummy," either. Can't these modern instrument manufacturers even paint things properly???
It's what happens when everything is built to hit a certain price point. You end up with components that are just good enough to do the job. So when you get a componet that isn't quite up to spec or you try running it in a tougher environment than it was designed for you end up with failures.
 
This definitely appears to be the "rubberized" coating. The same plastic that is not coated is fine. Same issue on the guard rails on the controllers. Kind of reminds me of the funky decay that happened to the foam lining in old anvil road cases. I just need to find the right compound to take the finish off. Perfectly functional and looks fine without it. Wish they never coated the things! Obviously, it was an effort to upscale the look.
 
"It's what happens when everything is built to hit a certain price point. You end up with components that are just good enough to do the job. It's what happens when everything is built to hit a certain price point. You end up with components that are just good enough to do the job. "

But the components DON'T do the job. They crap out when they're supposed to do the job . Maybe I'm just old school but personally I'd be happy to pay more for something that WORKS and with a reliable manufacturer behind it who has a track record..
 
It's the rubberized coating. As soon as I pulled the MK1's out of their packaging I groaned. The A&H GLD has rubberized rails. It's sticky and gross so we covered it with an aesthetic piece of black gaff. But yeah, I don't understand why anyone still does that coating on their products. I've never seen it not eventually break down and there's no way to clean it that I'm aware of since it's the surface itself degrading.
 
How old are the lights/what model? I personally love the coating on the Rogues and Mavericks, it holds up very well especially compared to some other finishes on moving heads. Cleans easily, holds up to touring well, covers don't crack nearly as easily as a lot of the more "name brand" movers. If it's the ooold stuff, like Legend series or Q-spot line, that's from before Chauvet was really developing their own stuff. They made a huge leap forward in quality and performance when they came out with the Rogue line. I've personally found Chauvet unit (Rogues/Mavericks) to be more reliable than some of the more "name brand" units.

Speaking of coatings, a few years back when the Clay Paky B-Eye K20 came out, the foam rubber inserts they shipped with the units to go in to roadcases caused discoloration of the yoke covers and head covers (but mostly the yoke covers) of the early batches. A shop I was working at that received some of one of the first orders of B-Eye K20s to hit the USA had constant white mold looking discoloration on the yoke covers after they had been in the cases a while, except unlike mold it could not be cleaned off - it appeared to be part of the plastic of the yoke cover. They told us it was a chemical reaction between the foam rubber of the inserts and the plastic they'd used for the fixture and sent us new yoke covers. Those foam rubber inserts also always smelled a little bit odd.
 
Powder coating on steel housings rarely do that.
If today's moving lights had powder-coated steel housings, they'd be way too heavy.

I managed an engineering office full of CAD machines for 20 years, up to 125 PCs a times plus a handful of servers, and in that time NEVER had a motherboard fail or a chip on a board fail. The most often occurring problems were with network cables or somebody dinking around with network settings or email settings on a workstation. All of our servers were using RAID drive arrays and I NEVER even had a hard drive fail. What kind of crap is in lighting hardware????
And I would bet that if you take the same CAD machines and servers, throw them in roadcases, rattle them around across the country, lift them up and down with truss, let stagehands have their way with them, and expose them to insane heat and frigid cold in trailers and trucks - you'd have some failures.
 
For the Maverick and Rogue housings, CHAUVET Professional suggests using furniture polish like Pledge. Please stay away from any kind of alcohol based cleaners as that will strip off the finish.
 
If today's moving lights had powder-coated steel housings, they'd be way too heavy.


And I would bet that if you take the same CAD machines and servers, throw them in roadcases, rattle them around across the country, lift them up and down with truss, let stagehands have their way with them, and expose them to insane heat and frigid cold in trailers and trucks - you'd have some failures.
If today's moving lights had powder-coated steel housings, they'd be way too heavy.


And I would bet that if you take the same CAD machines and servers, throw them in road cases, rattle them around across the country, lift them up and down with truss, let stagehands have their way with them, and expose them to insane heat and frigid cold in trailers and trucks - you'd have some failures.
Other than cost; why not powder coated, structurally well designed, aluminum?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Other than cost; why not powder coated, structurally well designed, aluminum?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
Weight.
While it may not be a consideration for you and your application, if you take a ~40-70lb moving head and make it aluminum (actually Magnesium Alloy is a better material and lighter still), you now made a 100+lb fixture that many people will be lifting in and out of cases everyday. A 1 person job, just became a 2 person job (slows speed raises labor costs), not to mention personnel fatigue. Heavier fixtures now require heavier motors...Couple this with load ratings on some structures and the list of reasons why not goes on and on. Global companies also need to consider other markets where weight is an even larger factor because of truck GW loads and road capacity.

The list goes on and on.

Could we build everything like a tank, sure, would you pay for all the added up front and operational costs?

If you want a die cast fixture, buy an IP rated one, they're almost all die cast. You mentioned earlier about your Century and Kliegl metal fixtures...our Ovation series (modern versions of those) are all die cast.
 
Other than cost; why not powder coated, structurally well designed, aluminum?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
The plastic that's used for head covers is great at taking a beating and not showing it. Plastic bends and reforms its shape much easier, and bounces off risers and pipes better. The plastic is also fully colored black or dark grey, so if it gets scratched, it doesn't show much - whereas powder coated aluminum would scratch and show wear. I see this on our powder coated truss and hardware all the time. Also, I imagine it's much easier to do injection molded housings than it would be to do stamped out aluminum - and with some of the nice headcover designs I've seen, I feel like some aluminum welding would be involved. Also, it would be much more expensive and heavier. Weight remains a primary concern because, as Ben mentioned above, trucking and labor are heavily dependent on lights being as low on weight as possible.

I've been servicing and maintaining moving lights professionally for over a decade now as a main function of my job, and I wouldn't ever want metal head covers or yoke covers. Better plastics, sure - some of the old Coemar and Robe stuff could get really gunky - especially the old Robe XT series (but they're much better now). The Clay Paky problem I mentioned, and some of the really old Elation (design spots, focus spots), and some of the Elation stuff to this day can be a little easy to crack compared to other brands. But none of these are issues that I'd want to fix with replacing that plastic with metal - just with better plastic.

For the Maverick and Rogue housings, CHAUVET Professional suggests using furniture polish like Pledge. Please stay away from any kind of alcohol based cleaners as that will strip off the finish.
We just use Windex on the Rogue/Maverick housings and it works great, but they never get that messed up because we clean them regularly. Never alcohol for anything but glass lenses or really f'd up metal enclosures. I've been doing Windex on the housing & Brillianize and/or alcohol for the lenses for over a decade of professionally maintaining moving lights and it has worked great. I'll try out the Pledge idea if we have any that get really messed up.
 
Also, I imagine it's much easier to do injection molded housings than it would be to do stamped out aluminum - and with some of the nice headcover designs I've seen, I feel like some aluminum welding would be involved. Also, it would be much more expensive and heavier. Weight remains a primary concern because, as Ben mentioned above, trucking and labor are heavily dependent on lights being as low on weight as possible.
Typically funky metal shapes, that aren't amenable to being stamped and formed, would be made by either die casting or a powdered metal (sintering) process, rather than by being welded up from a number of sheet metal stampings. The latter is capable of making quite high-tolerance parts with good finishes, often requiring little or no machining afterwards, and is probably used for many of the mechanical components within a moving light fixture (the gears and cogwheels and such) and also in many other mechanical gizmos.

That being said, your comments on plastic vs. metal cases are pretty much right on in terms of the ways in which plastics are advantageous.
 

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