more Cyber issues!!

I have a cyber hanging in a club that has been giving me what seems to be a common issue, it would boot up then run fine for a while then...... the bulb would go out and it would stop responding to dmx, then after 10 mins or so power down. Sometimes it was down for the night sometimes after a few mins it would reboot and run again, sometimes only for a few mins and other times for hours. Hell some nights it ran all night like a champ!! I've read all the post on here that seem to apply, and here is what I've done so far:

swapped out the 14 pin harness a few times--same

swapped out logic board a few times --- same

and yes the xlr connectors are locked

and today I pulled the power board resoldered the contacts, the reason for this is that if you bang on the light it starts back up making me think it's not a electric prob but something physical like a cold solder joint or component on the board. When I put it back in and everything worked fine....... however I do notice that one fan was not spinnig(one of the bottom ones) the light ran for about an hour when I noticed the lamp was out, it was running dmx fine. I was even able to re strike the lamp from the board, so I'm thinking it overheated. So I powered it off and back on, now here where I am lost? The all fans runs when the power is frist turned on it starts to home, stops for a sec the one fan then stops and it finishes homing and runs?
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    I intially was going to say ballast, but since voltage to the fans seems intermittent, it sound like a bad transformer to me.

    Anyway to keep the cover off and looks at the voltage indicator LEDs on the PSB while running?

    Hope this helps. :)
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    I have the covers off now and the switches bypassed, what should i be looking for?
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    Swap the fan leads, and see if the behaviour follows the fan. It might just be a fan getting old and tired . . . or possibly a bad harness connector . . As per the schematic, all three fan sockets are common to the same switching transistor, so they should all either run or not. Fan power is 24V DC, so you might also want to measure that - perhaps the 24V supply is sagging, or the fan switch transistor is giving a large voltage drop . . .

    The schematics are at HES (if you don't already have them) and the fan circuit is very basic . . .

    - Tim
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    thanks, yeah I noticed the same thing on the schematics. if there is less then 24v what next? looking at the schematics I see T3 or T4, or IC3?
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    Note that the switching circuit is in the cold side (to ground) of the fans. You need to measure the 24V supply in reference to ground, and make sure that the 24V rail is correct, and if it is not, then check SC5 and SC6, as well as IC9 and the associated parts in the switching regulator diagrammed on the page prior to the fan control circuit. If that is correct, but you still see less than 24V across the fan connectors, then move on to T3 and T4. I would not typically suspect the IC driving T3, since those are on/off logic, and it *is* switching . . . You might also disconnect one fan at a time, to be sure that you don't have one that is failing and drawing too much power and pulling the others down, or even more simply, that you don't have a harness short that is being aggravated by the vibration of the fixture homing . . .

    Note also that that 24V supply also powers all the stepper motors in the fixture - I assume that everything else is working? If so, then it's probably a fan, or T4. (To test T4, you can jumper across T4 emitter to collector, which should turn the fans on. If they still don't come on, then it's a fan, the harness, or the fuse . . .

    - Tim
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    WOW! all the work and time, lots of time on this light I now have a working cyber(two days running and no prob so far)!!!! So what was wrong you ask?........LOOSE fuse holder!!!!

    I happen to be trying to fix it again and it happen to be dark enuff to see an arc when i banged on the thing. The one side of the holder was fine the other had a slight gap and the fuse was shorting on and off so fast that the light wasn't turning off, just the lamp one time, the data the next time, sometimes both.

    I bent the fuse holder tabs tight poped the fuse back in and all is right!

    BTW it was the F1 fuse
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    Interestingly enough, I had an odd problem like this on an I-Beam a while back . . . one of the infamous "not if but when it will burn" connectors was just starting to go . . . everything worked absolutely fine when not struck, but when struck, it would just start going either nuts, or looping - IE strike, warm up, go out, home, rinse, lather, repeat . . .

    Amazing how the low current to run just the logic can pass through these dodgy connections OK sometimes, but when the lamp strikes, the drop is enough to make things go totally batty . . .

    Glad you found it, and even more glad that it was simple . . . .

    I find one of the best things to do when caring for older fixtures is to find out what the typical failures are, and make the first strike before they go. On the I-Beams, it's the PCB connectors . . . I used to fail 2 to 3 a year, and once they got replace with barrier strips, not another single failure . . . Can't say that I know of any failures in the Cyber that are as common as that to deal with (I-Beam pretty much taught HES what *NOT* to use . . . . ) but keep that in mind . . . with appropriate preemptive care, older fixtures can be almost as reliable as new stuff . . . . at least in my experience, and typically a heck of a lot easier to work on!

    - Tim
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