Chauvet R2 Wash- burning out LED driver board

StradivariusBone

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I tried posting this on Chauvet's tech page, but something is wrong with the captcha (or maybe it's on my end). Anyway, it's easy enough to throw it out here and maybe if @Ford is around he could share his $0.02.

Got an R2 Wash. LEDs went out, but the fixture still powered on, moved, reacted to DMX like normal. Took it apart to find that the voltage regulator at U19 on the driver board was burned up. It looks like it's supplying the 3.3v for the micropro logic, so that would definitely take out the LED array if it can't parse anything from the main board. The LEDs themselves appear to be fine. Fixture is out of warranty so we tried our luck at just replacing the regulator which fried quickly. Figuring there's a dead short somewhere, but was wondering if this is a common failure. I found this page that had a pretty good writeup on these fixtures, but doesn't say anything about the voltage regulators.

Easy enough to just replace the board, but where's the fun in that?
 
Hey, I just saw this.... sorry for the much belated reply. These have been pretty rock solid, and I'm not aware of any issue with the voltage regulators. Let me dig around and see what I can come up With.
 
No prob! We ended up getting through to tech support and just buying a replacement donut board. I was mostly just curious.
 
So.... I checked with our Service Dept. This is not a common issue. Really, the most common issue with these has been either physical abuse, or people do ZERO maintenance and cleaning on fixtures for YEARS... so thermal/gunkiness. Our chief engineer said that without seeing it, he really couldn't say, but if I was twisting his arm for an answer... There are a few capacitors that sit around the voltage regulator. he said to try replacing those with the VR . Maybe one of the Caps went bad.

Sorry I don't have anything more definitive.
 
That's good to know! We've had it up there maybe a year or so, when pulling the board I expected to find some dust bunnies gunking it up, but it was darn near pristine. Swapping in the new donut got us back in business however-

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I'll spend some spare time on the board looking for bad caps, but in any event thanks for sharing some insight. These are really nice little wash lights and serve us well. Thanks!!
 

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