Help me in my new Facility

[josh88]

So today was the first day I really had a change to access everything at my new theatre. Some of these things I know that I know and I'm just blanking because of all that is going on, some things I just have more learning to do on. With doing a syllabus for 3 classes, learning this theatre and the ropes of the new school, I'm just trying to keep up so I may be back here a few times updating this as I run into more stuff.

First up are the dimmers. I've got a full ETC Sensor Dimmer rack and it was open when I found it, am I right in remembering that the door should be kept closed because of how the ventilation works?



Also in the past I've had very little interaction from a management side with dimmers and racks and the like, so in this picture I wondered what the AFM means, but since they appeared to be empty spaces between dimmers I assume it is short for air flow manager? or something similar? Also does the D20 mean anything that I'll need to know? I didn't find any kind of book for the rack and as far as I can tell nobody has put together a tech packet so thats next on my list.


Part of my confusion with the AFM was that everything on the left was numbered, obviously only the actual dimmers have the breakers attached I suspect they are numbered as such because someone could lay out the rack insides in a different configuration?


last question for now was what is this?

I've got a few books for it, labeled ETC architectural, Unison CE station manual and one for installation.

Edit- I should have just looked at the book I guess, so this is the house light system. anything more to it that I'm missing?

Am I completely crazy on some of these thoughts or am I on track? I've been trying to wrap my head around so much stuff the past week that I swear it shoves out old knowledge. Next I have to try to set up these online gradebooks..

as always, thanks for the help. I'll certainly be back with more questions.

 

[Footer]

AFM is air flow module. Suprised thats not in the wiki. Its there to keep the right amount of air pressure in the rack to keep everything cool. Yes, that door should be closed.

Don't worry about the dimmers and all of that stuff right now. Looks like a new install. As long as things turn on there is really no reason to ever go to the rack minus vaccumining it out every once in awhile. Same thing goes for that unison contoller. There is actually very little you can do with that thing without a blessing from ETC.

Right now, get your classes together. Take it from someone who has been there (and glad they are no longer there!). Starting teaching at a school is a big change. You have to deal with the administration, classes, controlling teens, etc. You should not be thinking about "is my dimmer rack right?". If it works, go with it. In a few weeks when things calm down, dig into it. However, right now, get your life in order, get your room in order, and try to fly under the radar.

 

[danTt]

Hello,

1) Yes, the door should be closed. The filter in the front of it keeps dust and related badness out. You might want to check and ensure the filter is clean before closing the door, it can accumulate a lot of dust.

2) The AFM is, as you surmise, an airflow module. It's just there to fill the hole mostly. The numbers exist for when a d20 is placed in that space. A d20 is the standard etc 20 amp dimmer module, there are other options that can also be placed in there, depending on the needs of the space.

3) The unison panel is usually connected to house light control, it's a memory playback system that is connected to the buttons you use to turn on house/work lights. Depending on how the system is set up, you should be able to record looks from the lighting console onto the unison system, and have some easy access presets, if necessary.

 

[tyler.martin]

Don't worry about the dimmers and all of that stuff right now. Looks like a new install.

That rack has a CEM classic in it, and Unison CMd. I wouldn't be a recent install but the equipment is in decent shape, but rest assured ETC has IMO the best technical support in the industry.

Part of my confusion with the AFM was that everything on the left was numbered, obviously only the actual dimmers have the breakers attached I suspect they are numbered as such because someone could lay out the rack insides in a different configuration?

Nothing phyiscally inside the rack changes, but you can configure the rack to be either in a "straight" config, where the dimmers are in numerical order with the phases. if the numbers are in a strange order the rack is in "balanced" config, where the Dimmers are balanced over the phases in a arrangement that should help share the load. The slots with the AFM's should be labelled with 2 dimmer circuits should you ever want to install dimmers, in your case (Dual 20A Dimmers) modules into those slots.

the dimmer numbers ie. D20 is just an indicator of the capabilities of that module. There are tons of other module types like D15 (Dual 15A) CC20 (Constant 20A) R20 (Relay 20A) and more.

 

[museav]

Josh, you might want to start with trying to find out what manuals, documentation, training, etc. were called out to be provided by the people who built the theatre and installed the systems. And do what you can to make sure those companies don't get final acceptance and/or final payment until what was defined to be provided has indeed been provided, once they're signed off and paid you may have little leverage to get any outstanding issues addressed.

By the way, an AFM is an Air Flow Module, essentially a blank module while the D20 is a dual 20A, 350us rise time dimmer module.

 

[josh88]

the building was new, I believe 6 years ago, so nothing in there is older than that, and other than clutter everything is in pretty decent shape. Luckily I'm only teaching 3 classes, one of them being tech theatre, so that one will be easy. I'd love to just focus on school, but we're starting rehearsals in a week or so and I'll have to start getting a set built and start lights so I can get the rental order through.

 

[Grog12]

First up are the dimmers. I've got a full ETC Sensor Dimmer rack and it was open when I found it, am I right in remembering that the door should be kept closed because of how the ventilation works?

Part of my confusion with the AFM was that everything on the left was numbered, obviously only the actual dimmers have the breakers attached I suspect they are numbered as such because someone could lay out the rack insides in a different configuration?

If you have AFM's you don't have a full rack. Yes its numbered on the left for if you have/ever expand to have a full 96 circuits run from the dimmers. Take all the advise of those who posted before me.

 

[jglodeklights]

What they said. The first thing I would highly recommend doing is learning how the CEM works. While it looks to be in excellent condition (you would have at least some dust accumulation at the rack if it wasn't maintained), sometimes things like to happen that cause the rack to freeze or your console dies midshow or there is an emergency on deck. The CEM allows resetting of the dimmers, setting levels of dimmers (including full and out) and time to hold last scene upon loss of data; along with other more advanced functions such as dimmer curves and addressing.

Welcome up to RI, you are getting here as I'm nearing the end of my season in South County.

 

[SteveB]

I believe ETC went to to the CEM+ around '03 or so. I have CEM+ from late 04, not sure they were still shipping older CEM after that, so that kind of dates your system although it might well have been purchased and waiting to be installed. Nothing wrong with it at all and this stuff mostly runs and runs. The actual dimmer modules are still the same and all parts are available with the entire system.

The rack dimmers are layed out the way they are due to the interior main power buss bar configuration which has the A phase on the upper third of the rack powering 16 modules (with 2 - 2.4kw dimmers per module typically), the B phase power in the middle and the C phase on the lower third. In order to distribute the load as evenly as possible, and due to the typical pair of dimmers on a single module, you end up with dimmers 1&2 in the upper third on phase A, dimmers 3&4 middle third on phase B and 5&6 in the lower third on phase C, repeating to the maximum number of dimmers in the rack. Then AFM's filling un-used slots. Note that there may well be house light dimmers in the rack as well with a different numbering scheme (or not).

About the only maintenance is to remove and clean the filters when they get dusty.

Somewhere in the theater will be pushbutton stations, slider stations and/or LCD panels. These connect to the Unison processor, which is essentially a separate lighting control console system, probably sending DMX to the dimmers in parallel to the main lighting controller, but sometimes the main console can send data through the Unison which can do a "Snapshot" to capture a complicated look as generated by the main console. Usually the Unison is the primary control for house lights, sometimes the work lights as well as other functions. Is there a separate dimmer pack somewhere dedicated for house lighting and or containing relay modules (they look like the paired dimmer modules, but contain switched on/off relays) ?. Or is it all in the main rack(s). This is good stuff to find out as you will want to to know and understand the system configuration in the event you need to troubleshoot.

Also, somewhere in the paperwork and documentation might be some stuff that came from the ETC factory and will have a Job Number. Should you ever need to call ETC tech support, if you can give them a job number, the tech folks can look up the system as it was designed (but not necessarily installed, especially if nobody notified ETC of changes). That's a huge head start for them understanding the system you have. Especially valuable is the Unison configuration file that they keep a copy of. That can be very useful if you have system problems.

 

[derekleffew]

josh88, it's slightly weird that you have AFM s in slots 31/32, 49/50 and likely others that we can't see. Usually these would be at the end of the rack, not in the middle. I'd check to see if you can find receptacle s for those circuits. Consult your circuit map. (You do have one, right? No? Seems like that's more important, to me, than preparing some silly syllabi.) In all ill-conceived bout of value-engineering, sometimes a rack will be fully wired but not fully populated; the idea being that the user will place modules in locations that are needed for a production, and put AFMs in unused circuits. One small step above a hard patch.

Another thing to consider (if 31/32 and 49/50 are truly unwired slots): it's a good idea to have in-rack spare modules, in case of an SSR failure, so you might want to budget for some more D20 modules to replace the AFMs. You just have to have good notes as to where the spares are kept.

Now get cracking--you have homework!

 

[josh88]

I'll check out and see where the AFMs are when I head back tomorrow. And as far as I can tell there is no circuit map. This place just had a temporary person for a year replacing the person who left two years ago. I've got an email out looking for any of the original files already, but given the lack of paperwork I've found anywhere thus far I'm not hopeful on finding anything like the original job number. Luckily my classes have outlines that I just have to flesh out so my transition shouldn't be too rough. And the head of finance wants to meet with me in the space not too long from now to go over some potential safety issues that may or may not be there which would be a good time to discuss things like extra modules and the benefit of having a tech packet for the space.

With the door open and some of the other things I've seen I have a feeling someone before me may have messed with it without any contact to ETC, I just don't know what or why they did. yet.

 

[DuckJordan]

Contacting etc should help. They try to keep some of those files on hand...

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

 

[tjrobb]

Re: spare modules- We have a pair of CC20's we keep around for our movers, it makes sure they have clean, non-dim power, and that let's us put them where we want. Quite handy.

 

[SteveB]

!

A good point by Derek. After you have Locked-Out/Tagged-Out the rack, If you pull the AFM out and peer inside,

OK, technically correct, but I didn't advise it as 1) The AFM has no electrical connections to the rack, it's just a blank card, so there's zero chance for arc flash by pulling the card. 2) Powering down a rack can sometimes lead to undesired consequences. You HOPE the CEM comes back up correctly. If I was removing every dimmer module for cleaning, we power down, but in this case ?. 3) He's presumably a professional and knows to not stick his fingers in to search for wiry thingies ?.

So I stand corrected but reluctantly

 

[josh88]

Ok, here's how the rack is set up:

1+ 2
7+ 8
13+14
19+20
25+26 (AFM)
31+32 (AFM)
37+38
43+44
49+50 (AFM)
55+56
61+62
67+68
73+74 (AFM)
79+80 (AFM)
91+92
3+ 4
9+10
15+16 (AFM)
21+22
27+28 (AFM)
33+34
39+40
45+46
59+96 (AFM)
[--CEM--]
51+52 (AFM)
57+58
63+64
69+70
75+76 (AFM)
81+82 (AFM)
87+88 (AFM)
93+94
5+ 6
11+12
17+18 (AFM)
23+24 (AFM)
29+30
35+36
41+42 (AFM)
47+48
53+54 (AFM)
59+60
65+66
71+72
77+78
83+84 (AFM)
89+90
95+96 (AFM)

so it looks like I've got 60 dimmers.

also I found this tag attached to the Unison box

would the number in the "other" section maybe be a job number? Haven't had any word yet on if they've found any of the original materials from the install.

I also found 4 NSI DDS6000 portable dimmers with the edison plugs as well as a bocce ball set. So a couple of interesting finds today

 

[ScottT]

The tag labeled "Sensor" at the top right of your dimmer rack should tell you the job number.

 

[starksk]

josh88, PM with drawings and job notes sent.

 

[josh88]

once again, another reason I love ETC. Thanks again Kirk.