Control/Dimming Obscure dimmers? ‘Gladiators’?

[Dittobox]

Hi Folks!

I recently have been given the production of lighting here at the church I'm employed at. The current lighting control and dimming system is in a state of disrepair and is quite old, consisting of an (green) Atmos panel (about 40 years old) for architectural lighting, and 3 Lighting Innovations Inc. Gladiator 1212 (25 years old? or so, I'd guess) units feeding a number of circuits in the rafters for stage purposes. Or so I'm led to believe. About 3 lighting folks back there might've been some sort of documentation or knowledge of the system, but now none of us have a working knowledge of it.

Has anyone heard of the latter units? The square lamps in the picture below are also on/off buttons that seem to activate the rocker switches which control power on/off to the associated circuits. I'm about 80% certain that when both are off I can control the associated circuit through an analog dimming controller—via a protocol unknown to me. The attached Leprecon board does function OK, but I have some circuits that seem dead.

The stage is just dismal with the amount of light I can produce out of the few functioning circuits.

We're working on replacing all of it but that's at least 12 months or more away. If anyone has some documentation or experience on these Lighting Innovations Inc. Gladiator 1212 units or anything close to them, I'd be very grateful!

Thanks!

 

[venuetech]

just a few thoughts: the "switches" are likely power breakers, the square buttons are likely a test button that allows you to turn that dimmer on with out having to go back to the control board. In my mind the normal configuration would be that the "switches" would be left "ON" and the buttons and the square buttons would not be active, this should allow the control board to control any working dimmers.
what kind of plug is attached to the control board, how many pins?

 

[Floobydust]

Looks like some old analog dimmers that may have some bad channels.
If you're technical, you can breathe a little more life into them; convert to DMX, etc.
Until you can get a decent upgrade, that is.

 

[FatherMurphy]

I recently replaced some dimmers like these at a small high school. Lighting Innovations was a mid-90's rebranding of Teatronics dimmers, and the ones I was working with ran on 0-10 vdc analog control (GLX-1212 was the model they had). The control connection was a 16 pin plug, and the pinout was slightly goofy - pins 1-11 lined up with channels 1-11, but pin 12 was 15 v +, pins 13 and 14 were not used, pin 15 was common, and pin 16 was channel 16.

Which Leprecon console do you have? They tend to be 0-10 vdc analog outputs (usually a Jones plug, black plastic rectangle with flat pins), with channels and pins being laid out 1 for 1, and the highest numbered pin being common. If you can meter 10 vdc on each pin when the corresponding fader is at full, then the console is fine, and your dead channels are dead dimmers, and/or wiring issues. If your console is a 600 series, someone might have been fooling with soft patch, and left some channels unpatched, so check that you're in default patch as you troubleshoot.

Dimmer problems could be issues with control cards, or with the SSRs that do the actual power handling. The SSRs, if bad, could probably be replaced for less than $100 each (parts cost), the cards would be more of a question. If you're not familiar with digging around in the guts of electrical equipment, don't take any chances, find someone who is qualified to do the repair work. One quick test is to try each channel via the test button on the front of the dimmer, patching a known good light into each channel as you try it. If all work on the test buttons, the SSRs are probably good. Another quick thing to check is to verify that each light is a good light - some 'dimmer problems' I've been called in on have actually been blown lamps.

 

[JD]

The square lamps in the picture below are also on/off buttons that seem to activate the rocker switches which control power on/off to the associated circuits.

If the square buttons (Test bumper) is activating the rocker switch (circuit breaker), then it sounds like you have some dead-shorted loads attached to it. This may be why things are not working too well!
Some of these older units are real workhorses. Trick is to get someone in there to look at the loads and condition of the dimmers. If there are load shorts, get them cleared. If the dimmers are in good shape, get a DMX to Analog converter and you can run them with a modern board. Most units this old used SCRs or Triacs as compared to SSRs used on newer dimmers. Although this required more circuitry to control them, they were a lot cheaper to replace ($7 to $15 for a Triac or SCR.)

Don't give up on them because they are old! Conversely, if it turns out they are in bad shape with many real problems, then it is time to move on and get new dimmers.