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[hugovanmeijeren]

Hi,

I've recently acquired a bunch of VL2000 wash movingheads in various conditions. I'm doing some repairs on some of the lights that have issues.
I have 2 lights with the following issue: at first sight, they appear to work perfectly fine. But when they run a shape off the lighting console, after about 1 ~ 5 minutes in, all of a sudden the lamp turns off (not the dimmer, the actual lamp is shut off) immediately after which the fixture develops problems with maintaining its pan and tilt position.
*Fixture 1: after lamp turns off, the tilt motor loses its position and tries to run into its end stop.
*Fixture 2: after lamp turns off, the whole fixture freezes for a couple of seconds until the display shows "OK" and then continues its pattern again.

Thus far I have replaced both the main PCB and auxiliary pcb's of these fixtures. No success. Next step would be to swap out the ballasts, but I am wondering why a bad ballast would have an effect on the movements of the fixture? Is anyone familiar with this problem?

[Cailen Waddell]

Hi,

I've recently acquired a bunch of VL2000 wash movingheads in various conditions. I'm doing some repairs on some of the lights that have issues.
I have 2 lights with the following issue: at first sight, they appear to work perfectly fine. But when they run a shape off the lighting console, after about 1 ~ 5 minutes in, all of a sudden the lamp turns off (not the dimmer, the actual lamp is shut off) immediately after which the fixture develops problems with maintaining its pan and tilt position.
*Fixture 1: after lamp turns off, the tilt motor loses its position and tries to run into its end stop.
*Fixture 2: after lamp turns off, the whole fixture freezes for a couple of seconds until the display shows "OK" and then continues its pattern again.

Thus far I have replaced both the main PCB and auxiliary pcb's of these fixtures. No success. Next step would be to swap out the ballasts, but I am wondering why a bad ballast would have an effect on the movements of the fixture? Is anyone familiar with this problem?

I would guess ballast.  As it heats up it gets to a point where it gets too hot, low volts the lamps as well as the 12 and 5v supply for servos and main/aux pcbs....

If there are multiple issues - I generally suspect ballast first... 


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[hugovanmeijeren]

I would guess ballast.  As it heats up it gets to a point where it gets too hot, low volts the lamps as well as the 12 and 5v supply for servos and main/aux pcbs....

Hi Cailen, thanks for your reply. I will try to swap out ballasts from known good units then.

However, in these fixtures, the motors and main/aux pcbs are not fed from the ballast. There is a separate 24v DC power supply that feeds the main and aux pcbs. Although the ballast also takes a 24v in, so if the ballast starts to draw a high current all of a sudden, I can understand that the voltage of the psu will collapse, causing the rest of the spotlight to malfunction.

Do you happen to know any weak points in these ballasts, anything in particular to look out for when repairing?

[Cailen Waddell]

Hi Cailen, thanks for your reply. I will try to swap out ballasts from known good units then.

However, in these fixtures, the motors and main/aux pcbs are not fed from the ballast. There is a separate 24v DC power supply that feeds the main and aux pcbs. Although the ballast also takes a 24v in, so if the ballast starts to draw a high current all of a sudden, I can understand that the voltage of the psu will collapse, causing the rest of the spotlight to malfunction.

Do you happen to know any weak points in these ballasts, anything in particular to look out for when repairing?

Try calling VL and talking through with them.  My experience is primarily swapping whole parts, then sending offending part (ballast) back to shop for repair.  Didn't do component level repair. 

The VL office should be able to talk you through the troubleshooting.


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[hugovanmeijeren]

I just wanted to get back on this one. I solved the problem.

I figured out that the problem lies in an intermittent connection between the ballast rider card and the ballast itself. The old-style ballast uses a header connector to connect the ballast rider. Apparently, VL figured out that this was rather error prone and made a new version that uses a soldered board-to-board connector. However, due to a lot of stress on the solder joints, these will also crack over time.

The 2 lights that I had problems with, have both types of ballasts installed. I have re-flowed the solder connections and this solved the problem with one of the units. I will replace all the old-style header connectors with new soldered connections and think this will resolve the issues with the other light as well.

[ProSoundWeb Community]