Automated Fixtures VL2500 Spot Difficulties

Okay...I know these are ancient fixtures but it is what I have and still need to be able to use in our small community theatre. They are installed and not accessible without a ladder.

General question: I know that you are supposed to douse the lamp 10 minutes or so before you shut them down. Is there any way to do this remotely or am I climbing a ladder after every show?

One of them is not giving me any sensor errors but the gobo wheels are not landing in the proper locations. Stepper motors? Would those show up on a test? Sometimes recalibrating fixes, other times not.

The other unit that is acting up is starting to randomly douse the lamp. I immediately thought heat, however all the fans are doing what they are supposed to.

As I said, I know these are old fixtures but we are a small community theatre and are very lucky to have any movers at all. Any help at all would be very much appreciated.
 
You can turn douse lamp from the console via whatever dmx channel is associated with doing that job. You can find that in the dmx chart of the VL2500 manual.

Gobo wheel sounds like a sensor not the motor if the wheel is still turning. Could be dirty or dying. Sometimes errors will show up sometimes not. Mostly only when something stops working is when an error will show up.

The lamp turning off could be a myriad of things. From temp sensor over heating to bad lamp to socket to ignitior to ballast. If the lamp is turning off that should throw you an error which you can reference in the manual to see what solutions they have for that one.

The manual if you don’t have a copy

https://www.lightparts.com/docs/vari-lite/VL2500S_Service_B.pdf
 
If you are running Eos with the channel selected you can press the about key, then there will be a lamp controls button on the about page, when you click that it will have a lamp on and lamp off. I usually will put anything that needs to be lamped in a group, and learn a macro for on and off.

If it doesnt work, you ay have to look at the manual and there is usually a setting for DMX lamp on/off control.
 
The other unit that is acting up is starting to randomly douse the lamp. I immediately thought heat, however all the fans are doing what they are supposed to.

Fan errors in VLs can be illusive. Long-hour/old fans in the 4-digit VLs are prone to temporary motor seizure/stoppage. During that time, the fan stoppage triggers a fan error/fault, which immediately results in the fixture dousing its lamp. Sadly, the fan then resumes functioning just fine, and the error clears. I'm not confident how to catch this consistently; I got lucky and caught one of my VL3500s doing this exact thing during a basic fixture diagnostic cue stack that I run during installs. I went in, cleaned all of the motor contacts and cleared dust from the coils, and gave them a quick dry lube, and they worked great from there. Not sure beyond that, hope this helps a little.
 
Fan errors in VLs can be illusive. Long-hour/old fans in the 4-digit VLs are prone to temporary motor seizure/stoppage. During that time, the fan stoppage triggers a fan error/fault, which immediately results in the fixture dousing its lamp. Sadly, the fan then resumes functioning just fine, and the error clears. I'm not confident how to catch this consistently; I got lucky and caught one of my VL3500s doing this exact thing during a basic fixture diagnostic cue stack that I run during installs. I went in, cleaned all of the motor contacts and cleared dust from the coils, and gave them a quick dry lube, and they worked great from there. Not sure beyond that, hope this helps a little.

Here is the latest on the lamp dousing issue. I was literally right next to the fixture when the lamp randomly went off (after being on about 20 minutes). All three fans were operating the entire time (I have the yoke arm covers off as well as the cover that hides the fan assembly). On the menu I went to manually turn on the lamp through the configure menu and it was set to off. As soon as I turned it to on, the lamp sort of "sputtered" but did not come on. At that point the only way I could get it to turn on would be to let it cool with the lamp off and then turn it on. It seems to me that despite the fans moving, the heat is somehow tripping the lamp off, unless it is a ballast/ignitor issue? Any ideas would be appreciated.
 

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