I have a client with the above dimmer cabinet. He recently installed some LED lamps into what was previously incandescent lamps. When attempting to dim the zones up the unit will reach about 70%. After this point when continuing to increase the brightness of the zones the lights turn off for no apparent reason. I looked at the dimmer cabinet but could see no way to change or alter the dimmer curve to compensate for this. Is there another way to do this so that the LED lamps will dim as they are supposed to?
Lightolier ILS-LM-8080 Dimmer Cabinet
- Thread starterBart53
- Start date
Thanks for the reponse. He said they were. I asked him to provide me with the info on the lamps to verify that they indeed are dimmable. I'm still waiting on that info.
JD
Well-Known Member
Not the dimmers. Some LEDs will work fine on a wall dimmer but not on a theatrical dimmer. Ran into this when we did out relamp. the TCP lamps are fine, but we had a horrible problem (much like you describe) with the Phillips BR30 lamps. Cracked one open and found they use a half-wave rectifier. (one diode) This DC offset was the problem. Put a dummy load (200 watt incandescent) and they worked fine. But, that kills the whole idea! Ended up moving them all to non-dims and using the TCP lamps.
Thanks for the info John. I've reached out to the manufacturer to get their take on it. I'll probably get a reply something like "each LED lamp will react differently in the circuit, try one until it works" or some such remark. We'll see how they address this. If there was a way to reconfigure the dimmer curve for the LED lamps I'm sure that they would respond to commands as expected. I've done this previously with other manufacturers dimming cabinets and the LED lamps dimmed properly, so there has to be a way to accomplish this.
JD
Well-Known Member
The problem that I have run in to is that the dim-up from black curve is different then the dim-down from full. I don't think you will get a good resolve from the manufacturer. When it comes to LEDs, "try before buy" becomes important. If ghost loading the circuit works, then you know that the dimmers are being tripped up by the lamps.
Thanks again for relating your experiences with these LED lamps. I can see that the learning curve on these are going to be high because of their differences from manufacturer to manufacturer. If I am able to reach a resolution I will definitely post it here so that it can passed along. Thanks again for your help and interest in my plight.
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