Dimmers not acting right

[justKC]

I work part time in a older theatre and lately the dimmer rack has been giving me trouble. The theatre has a ETC dimmer wrack that is at least 15 years old and it is run with an ETC express. The problem stated about two months ago I can Back from a dinner break where i had left the board on but no lights up to find that half my lights on stage up and i had no control even with the master down they wouldn't turn off. I tried shutting the board down that didn't work. I called a friend who has been to my theatre and he suggested i pull the 3 control boxes from the top of the rack and but them back in. this worked in till about 2 weeks ago when the same thing happened but this time instead of the lights just being on they were pulsing from about 50% to full. I pulled the control boxes again and it worked mostly. I got threw the show but i noticed I had some channel patch issues, because I work part time I haven't been back till today. I was able to fix most of the patch problems but I have 2 lights that are plugged into different dimmer coming one when i bring up one dimmer but not the other. So for example I have a light plugged into dimmer 37 and 38 but there both coming on when i bring up Dimmer 37 on the board neither are coming on when i bring up 38. I don't have a lot of spare dimmers so this is a problem. Any ideas would be helpful I not at work now but will upload a picture of the dimmer rack when i get back.

KC

 

[JohnD]

It's etc so best advice is to call them, take advantage of their legendary support. It's best to do it when in front of the rack. I do have to say I like the typo, one might say you have a wacky wrack.

 

[Scenemaster60]

Yeah, I second John's advice.

 

[derekleffew]

... and he suggested i pull the 3 control boxes from the top of the rack and but them back in. ...

This leads me to believe your "dimmer wrack" (LOL) is an LMI/ETC L86, and thus is older than 15 years; more like 20-25. Does it resemble this?

As @JohnD said, give ETC Tech Support a call at 1-800-688-4116. No matter how old the equipment, they can help you.

 

[DavidNorth]

If indeed an L86 rack as Derek posted, the troubleshooting is very different than other ETC racks. Each control module controls its own column of dimmers and the three do not interact. Most times hitting the reset button will fix the problem. I hesitate to tell people to pull the modules out and push back in as after many repetitions, the module may damage pins in the rack or cease to mate well with the rack due to bent sheet metal in the module. However, if the modules have been pulled and reseated, it is necessary to hit reset on the module so that the module knows which phase it is in, thereby affecting dimmer numbers, ie patching.

As far as the problems, my guess is that one of the control modules is going bad. It is important to track which specific dimmers are having issues as that will tell which of the three control modules is the one to get repaired.

Call ETC as they can help you narrow this down rapidly.

Thanks,

David