Clipsal 8 channel dimmer blown!!!

As the title states it's blown with carbon at the top next to the out going load side terminals.
This dimmer retails north of $900.
Is it a manufacturers fault?
Or is something in the load side circutry caused it to cook?
I have zero experience with c-bus systems.

 

Hi mmiddnight,

why not post a picture for us to look at?

At times, if load cables are not screwed up tightly, over time arcing can cause the carbon tracking build up you are describing.

Have you / your sparky tried re-terminating the cables and cleaning the terminals / screw posts?

Regards,

Brad

 

I'm on an iPhone the website won't let me attach photos.

The terminals are charred but it's the section next to it that has cooked and melted, I can see many copper wire banded togethe in a circle(coil?)

My electrician changed some halogen lamps and transformers a month ago. They couldn't have caused the melt down?

I'm afraid it's toast and rescrewing the terminals is futile but I'd like to know for the future replacement.

Thanks for the reply

 

Hi Mmiddnight,

An initial question I have is why did you put new halogen transformers on the dimmer? Were the old lights doing something that led you to do that?

Without seeing the problem, it sounds like it might be part of the triac's EMC circuit overheating/overheated. This could possibly be caused by reasons such as having mixed incompatible transformer types on a channel or too many transformers with high capacitance on the same dimmer channel, channel overloading or something else completely. Did you have all the units on each single dimmer channel replaced at the same time or just certain units?

Also worth checking that the transformers are 'leading edge' capable if on a 5508D1A or earlier model dimmer. If they are 'trailing edge' specific transformers, they really should only go on the universal 5504D2U style 4 port dimmers.

If the dimmer is badly toasted (as it sounds like it may be) you could possibly pull the cover off (with no power attached of course) and you may be able to ascertain which output channel the burnt bits relate to. This will give your sparky a circuit to test out for you to see if there are any issues that may cause a problem with a replacement dimmer. Alternatively if it's not too bad, Clipsal may be able to service it. You can take it to a Clipsal wholesaler who can fill in a product repair return form.

Take a look at this document about halogen transformers for more information about transformer types, number of units per circuit and capacitance.

Hope this helps you find the problem,

Brad