HUB System?

Yep.

But otherwise the company still exists so you might start there:
Vara-Light/Dimatronics/Hub Electric (Old parts Dist., ?Owned by Altman) 6207 Commercial Rd. Crystal Lake, Il. 60014. (815)455-4400
 
I forgot about this thread. Anyway...

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These our our dimmers. We have been having problems with them cutting out. I have come to the conclusion that the fan on the problematic dimmers has stopped working, therefore the dimmer shuts down and when it cools off, it comes back on.

My idea to fix this is to swap the bad dimmers with the house light dimmers, since those are less mission critical. And I might get some kind of big fan to put behind the dimmer rack.

My question is, how do I swap the dimmers out? It appears that the big flat head screw at the bottom holds the dimmer in, and I use the handle to just pull it out? Before doing this I would unpatch all the lights on that dimmer and turn off the breaker for that channel, maybe even cut all power to the auditorium. Tomorrow I might try and call that number.
 
First guess is that this would be the correct innitial action than something once the knob is undone inside to remove.

Hub people would certainly know more than I, much less others on perhaps stagecraft will know this system. I would think you can replace the fan but no doubt it might be other than just a fan problem or even a dirty fan problem. Surprising that there is not extra dimmers to swap out to - ofen there was extras to this type of system.

Hmm, switching house lighting fans as less critical, I would think house lights are more critical.

Let me know how calling that number works out. While I know of their existance and they are somewhat local, I'm yet to ever find time to say HI.
 
Well, I did call them today. The receptionist had a hard time transferring my call, but she eventually figured it out.

I talked to a guy named Rich and he was able to confirm that what I thought is actually how you remove the dimmers. Just unscrew the front screw and pull them out. He said it would be possible to send them in and they would clean out the 30+ years of dust and whatever and replace the fans and possibly the thermostat if it is busted too.

The house lights are spread out across three dimmers and then there are "accent lights" on a fourth dimmer. I'll probably just swap out the accent light dimmer for now. There is another bad dimmer but it is lightly loaded so that has been behaving.

We don't have any extra dimmers, so that's out. We only had an extra power supply for the board, and that one had to be put in years ago.

I have a dream that one day we will have sensor racks...
 
So they do exist... Get a website for them if possible.
Might send one in at a time for cleaning if not also buy an extra (they probably have extras available), so as to both have emergency dimmer and one always in each slot while the others are in for cleaning. I agree with the concept of cleaning them.

Hmm, 30 years of gunk and you have problems with what one of them? I would say that that's fairly solid state engineering. The Sensor rack dimmers might last that long on a constant basis, than again might not - we will see. In the mean time, you have dimmers that have lasted all of these years dependably. No reason they can't last another 30 or more years if maintained. Do you have some form of major advantage you can cite other than working or being new the ETC product has over that of the installed system by way of how the dimmer functions?

I'm sure you have lots of other things to spend your money on than dimmer racks. Perhaps just keeping them would be better and wishing for other equipment instead as a goal might be a better use of limited cash.

For now still, if they know all about them, send them in a card at a time and get what is needed fixed, than the rest done by way of PM and cleaning.
 
ship said:
Do you have some form of major advantage you can cite other than working or being new the ETC product has over that of the installed system by way of how the dimmer functions?

Sure. Dimmer per circuit, and no more telephone style patch panel. While I can get a ton of lights on one of these hub dimmers, we only have 16 channels, which is really limiting, especially when we want to do more. If/when we get rid of the existing system, we can then put in a new console and then we could get into something so simple as a chase sequence. And it's not just the dimmers which don't work properly, there's alot of little problems with the system too which add up.

Any renovations to the auditorium would be bonded and re-imbursable by the state so it wouldn't really be a big waste of money. Of course, this is probably 10 years down the line anyway.
 

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