Technobeam - lamp strike issue

No displays? www.emoticons.free.fr/smileys/Emotion-LiftEyebrow/eyebrow.gif
Chris is correct. Got to fix those first.
How old is old? How many hours on the units? :footinmouth: Dooh! You need displays to answer my questions.:confused:

Do the units finally fire?
Are the units that dont fire the last 2 on line?
Are there more than 2 abandoned vehicles in your front yard?
Just a few things we need to know...;)

I'll get on the displays asap. Yes they finally fire, almost always the second time I try. They are not the last two in the chain (it's not always two, sometimes just one, sometimes there is no problem and they all strike first try.)

The units are 10 years old

I'd try tightening up the connections on the ignitor. They do occasionally come a little loose.

Hey, I've got another quick question. One of my fixtures is kind of not focusing properly, but I don't think its the focus tube. The Focus tube works, and moves the full length of the track up and down, but when the gobo looks sharp there is still bleed through outside of the pattern, meaning that if I focus the "technowedge" gobo to look sharp outside of the sharp edge there is light spilling out and it's kind of fuzzy looking. I hope I'm making sense!:dunno:

make sure the lenses in the lens tube are set correct. I bet one is off.

Hey Tim,
It hasn't always been like that, it's a recent problem. Can those lenses come unset on their own?

Is it a sealed lens?
or one of the old unsealed 4:1's
Those tend to have haze fluid build up on the elements, causing the exact problem you are describing.
Joshua Wood

Lenses were ok, just dirty optics. Thanks guys

as a followup question on a recent issue I've been having. Occasionally, one of my tbeams douses its light in the middle of a show. Is there anyway to strike it w/o a reboot/home? I usually use an tbeam LCD controller on these guys, but occasionally a dmx controller (in which case, close the shutter and hit channel 18 remotely boots), but the boot times are too long in the midddle of a show.

it should not be lamping off. You need to pull out the sled and make sure the fan is clean and functioning properly. If it still continues to shut off, i'd try replacing the fan to be safe. Also make sure the fan is getting a full 24 volts.

Good point Tim. I'd check the power factor cap too. If it's going bad what you decribed will happen. It's the big silver cap next to the ignitor.

best way to test the PF cap (power factor cap) is to clamp around one of the wires with an ammeter and see what your amperage is. If its 0 then your cap is bad. If its at least 1 amp (i'm going off of the top of my head here) its good. Also if you are not seeing any amperage meter across both terminals to see if you are getting voltage to the cap, if not then there is a problem with the logic board.