Design Never used dimmers. Need to start now. HELP!

[thechef]

Hi,

I'm pretty new to the forum. Just posted my hello in the new members section. I'm pretty new to all this lighting business, so you may have to bare with me. What I lack in technical knowledge, I make up for in other ways. At least I think that's what I'm supposed to say.

To cut to the chase, I was wondering if anyone could help me out a little. I'll start of by saying I'm based in the UK, for electrical reasons. I'm off on my 3rd tour in April, and it's going to be the 1st which I'm doing a full design for. I wanted advice on connecting some work lights up to dimmers so that I can control them from the desk via DMX. these are the lights themselves 400W Portable Worklight - Worklights - Lighting -Decorating & Interiors - Wickes. they are also available in 120W should that be necessary. Now, the power available on this tour is going to be very limited. Pretty much no 16/32A supplies (with exceptions), all 13A. More than likely a lot of it won't even be on a separate circuit to the sound. If you read my bit in the new members section this won't be new, but the venue I work in has no dimmer racks, just LED pars, moving heads and our blinders are sunstrips which have their own dimmers, so I don't know the first thing about them. I'm trying to get some shadowing time in my local theater, but in the meantime I thought I'd ask here. I'm sure it's very simple, but to the untrained eye there is a whole load of stuff available out there at varying prices and I don't know where to begin. If anyone can help, I'd be forever grateful.

Thanks in advance.

 

[josh88]

You'll need dimmers of some kind. It sounds like the space you're going to doesn't have any so you'll need to buy some or rent some.

You're looking for something like this NSI/Leviton D4DMX Dimmer Pack - Spire Lighting Design while there are all kinds of flavors basically they all work the same. You plug whatever you want dimmed into it, making sure you stay under the max wattage per channel/pack in this case 1200/2400, then it needs to be plugged into the wall. With the light you linked you could put 3per channel though I try to always stay under the cap, so I wouldn't put more than 2 per channel, keeping you at 800 watts

after that you'll need to feed it with dmx from your controller (computer, dj board, pearl, whatever you're using). Which in most cases will come from a a 3pin XLR cable, so if your controller is 3 pin already you'll be fine, but if it is a 5pin dmx you'll need an 5pin to 3pin adapter.

I just googled and that pack was the first one to come up, if you have a favorite rental house you go through or a supplier you like, check and see what they have for options as far as portable dimmers go.

 

[jwolfkill]

So how big is your rig going to be? What kind of luminaires (LED, tungsten)? Are you only going to have 13A circuits? It's going to take a few of those to power even a modestly sized rig of tungsten luminaires, considering a single 2.4kW dimmer will pull 11-12 amps at full load on 230V mains.

You could easily plug 3 or 4 of the halogen worklights into a single dimmer (using both channels) - I'm pretty sure the bulbs in the one you linked are dimmable. The question is whether you really want to take up an entire dimmer for work lights. Why do you need to control them from the desk? Work lights are generally off whenever the house is open, so would it not work to have them on an undimmed circuit?