Kliegl Bros. Type SP Patch Panel

[Glossy Shines]

Another thought here. Measure the voltage when the building HVAC load is low. It could be that the voltage is only high at certain times, like before the studio starts warming up, and before the heat of the day. A few minutes of high voltage can still kill lamps.

Electrical loads in the area around your building are also a factor. Maybe it's only high during the late evening news show, when the neighbors are not using much power. This is where a more sophisticated voltmeter with min/max hold can be left in place to log what is happening for 24 hours or more.

We do have a plethora of "power" issues here.

For a backstory... I came to this station last year. I noticed most of the studio lights had blown bulbs, not focused, just basically all out of wack. The bulbs taken out of the lights looked similar to the bulbs i posted here, melted and blacken. They have not had a "lighting" guy touch the lights in a decade or more. No one knew how to patch lights from the ETC board to the kliegl patch panel. I needed to get the studio looking good because i need to shoot promos in the studio, broll during severe weather, etc... and i don't have the time to ground up light every time i need to use the studio and the on air product from the studio was sub-par. They never did a complete relamp and would only replace bulbs when they went out. The color temp was all over the board.

I took a weekend and redid the entire studio and figured out the board/patch panel. Had everything looking good and working. Then bulbs started blowing early. The Source 4's (575 & 750) seem to be the ones that blown sooner. There are a few Moles that tend to give me issues too. We went in to the "problem" fixtures a replaced many internal parts that had wear & tear on them. The problem continued. We have never had a problem with the florescent light panels.

Back to the "power" issue. We have multiple factors at play.

1- We have been stuck by lighting twice in the last year. We have a super tall tower above the station.
2- We have grounding issues through the station. Corporate had a guy come in and worked up a plan; however, it's a long term project and very costly.
3- The power from the city is not that great. We take power spikes or drops monthly. Sometimes we take multiple hits in a day.
4- The station is in South West GA... so its like walking on the sun hot all day. It's 100 today. So we have AC running all day every day.

 

[Glossy Shines]

Hi Glossy, Please send me your contact info when you have a moment. Albenny is a little far but maybe a quick phone chat would work. By the way; I'm strictly a technician and I don't do sales or marketing. I'm also not selling service. Straight up chat that's all. It's a Boy Scout good deed type of thing.
[email protected]

Sent you an email.

 

[RonHebbard]

We got up into the grid today between newscasts. We tested some of our "problem" fixtures first. We looked at some Mole Baby Redheads we use for back lights (they are bulbed down to 500W) and some Source 4's (575W & 750W) we use for architectural lights & back lights. every fixture came in between 113-118 with a full load. We still have fixtures to test; however, i was not expecting that result. I uploaded the pics of the test equipment. We had a homemade unit and a standard multimeter. I am dumbfounded by the results so far. What should we do next?

@Glossy Shines Have you ever got to the root of / fully resolved your problem?
Obtained accurate voltage measurements at a problem circuit's location under load under all operating conditions??
With your studio's service fully loaded, HVAC operating, yada, yada???
Prithee do tell.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard