Control/Dimming Skimmers

[Grog12]

I heard a new term today "skimmers" in reference to dimmers that were claimed to be from the 60's...and have silicone in them.

All of which seemed weird and off to me so I thought I'd ask the community at large if they knew the term.

 

[derekleffew]

Might you have misheard? SCRimmer? See the wiki entry EDI for more.

 

[FMEng]

The solid-state, electronic device that controls the power to the light in all modern dimmers is called an SCR. SCR is short for silicon-controlled rectifier, also known as a thyristor. (Some dimmers use triacs, but triacs are simply two SCRs back to back in a common package.) I doubt that EDI's version of electronic dimming was anything unique although they did give it a clever name.

 

[BillESC]

I toured with Scrimmers for several years. They hum a bunch.

 

[Grog12]

Might you have misheard? SCRimmer? See the wiki entry EDI for more.

Nope I heard correctly he mis pronounced.

 

[shiben]

I figured it was referring to what the pool guy uses...

 

[Lightguy48]

Actually not all modern dimmers use SCR's or Triacs. IGBT's are becoming very popular. Using either RPC (reverse phase control) or sine wave dimming which is an electronic form of an autotransformer using chopping/PDM at a high frequency.

ETC's Sensor is an example, if you look at their Sensor Sine Wave dimming brochure it explains it further.