Chilli fault

[pumphouse]

We have just acquired and installed a 24 x 10A Chilli dimmer in our theatre. It came out of a corporate install and is probably in excess of 10 years old. On initial test after install everything seemed to be working fine, but the tech in with the current show advises that channels 11 and 12 stop working after about an hour or so - they seem to just not come on whereas the other channels seem to work fine.

 

The faulty channels don't need to be on for this time for the fault to appear - in fact they are mostly off.

 

Given the time factor it sounds like it could be a thermal issue of some kind, or possibly a driver fault if the drivers run in pairs.

 

Any pointers as to what to check first?

 

Thanks.

 

Jason.

[iank99]

It might be a faulty triac card - they're grouped in 4's but I'm surprised the other two channels on the card don't stop working too.

 

It might be worth getting someone who knows what they're looking at to pop the cover and check the traics are tight in their terminal blocks and clipped down to the chassis - possibly try swapping one of the triacs to see if that makes the issue go away.

 

It would also be worth checking to see what happens under manual control from the Chilli FP once the rack is up and running (and has been driving something for an hour) to see whether it's "loss" of a DMX signal causing the issue or a processor issue.