Mother and Child dimmers
- HIDLamp
- Posts: 620
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2016 9:37 pm
Mother and Child dimmers
I got asked if I could have a look at some faulty 'mother and child' dimmable halogen lamps. They said there's 4 in total and some have one light and others are totally dead. Well upon inspection and establishing that the lamps and plug fuses were ok I opened up the modules and found all the faulty ones to have something in common, all with a failed lamp had a nuked dimmer circuit. So presumably if the lamp goes dead short when it fails rather than bowing the 3A fuse in the plug it blows the dimmer instead. Quality. So for now the faulty dimmers have been by-passed so they light when plugged in untill I come up with a plan for them.
- FrontSideBus
- Posts: 1053
- Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 11:04 am
- Location: Liverpool
Re: Mother and Child dimmers
I'd first check to see if there was a sneaky bastard fuse on the circuit board of the dimmer unit.
- HIDLamp
- Posts: 620
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2016 9:37 pm
Re: Mother and Child dimmers
There is a soldered in one but it's only blown on 1 of them the others it's ok. There is only 1 soldered in fuse rated 2.5A on the input.
- FrontSideBus
- Posts: 1053
- Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 11:04 am
- Location: Liverpool
Re: Mother and Child dimmers
The main switching transistor would be my next check tbh.
- HIDLamp
- Posts: 620
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2016 9:37 pm
Re: Mother and Child dimmers
I'll have a look when I go back
- Slyspark
- Posts: 2999
- Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 11:00 pm
- Location: Surrey
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Re: Mother and Child dimmers
To be honest, the story of most modern dimmer modules that crap themselves as soon as a lamp fails. They're just rubbish now.
Bad choices make good stories!
- HIDLamp
- Posts: 620
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2016 9:37 pm
Re: Mother and Child dimmers
The other week when I had a small incident of putting mains up the 350mA output of a PSU not only did the PSU go bang rather spectacularly but the mains dimmer failed too. Fused at 3A. What is the point of the fuse going to be if the circuit components blow first.
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