I feel you bro with regard to the frustration on time and money spent on a project. What you need to do is charge the diags to the customer and send him back the working unit you purchased to keep them happy. Take time off of it and resume this project, because when you do figure out the problem later on down the road, it will feel so so good. Also, I’m not at all surprised on the difficulty in removing the parts from this thing. I’m inclined to say that it probably wasn’t because it was from a Chinese manufacturer, or it was engineered badly. I think it’s because these machines are incredibly complex, and have to fit a specific form factor, not to mention the harsh environments it has to operate in. Because of that, no amount of engineering would probably improve the serviceability of products like this.
I worked on a QSC K series speaker earlier this year. The fault was that the HF driver cut in and out, and the reason turned out to be that the amp / power supply board (both are on the same board) was covered in dried beer or soda (the actual HF driver was fine). I completely cleaned the board, reassembled everything, then ran it for 6-7 hours a day for a week as loud as I could stand in a private hallway outside my office. I even took it to a couple live shows & used it at nearly full volume. I gave it back to the customer, and 2 days later they brought it back, complaining of sparks &r smoke. Sure enough, one of the switching power supply MOSFETs was a perfect short, the board had a huge burn mark on it, and a bunch of the SMD components and traces were burnt away, just completely vaporized. The circuit board was totally FU-ed. Sometimes repairs just don't go as you hoped. In retrospect, I should have said that the board needed to be replaced the first time around. But it really did look cleanable, and it worked great for me for a much more extensive test than most technicians would have given it. Anyway, those moving head lights, the wires go to sh!te after a while due to the continuous movement of the head. But it's a nightmare to track down which particular wire has failed (because the wire usually conducts in some positions, but not in others), and it's a nightmare to replace them all if you decide to go that route. I despise repairing moving head lights. You gave it a great attempt. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Thanks for the comments, I really appreciate. Funny enough, a similar thing happened to me this week with The peavey amplifier that I repaired 3 weeks ago on video. It was working fine for couple of days. So I decided to take it for rental to a friend of mine that wanted a little sounds system with plenty of bass. I could have used one of my trusty Camco amp but it would require 3u + 1u processor and quite a heavy road case. So I gave him the peavey because power output was enough and it has input filter. And guess what, couple hours later, he call me saying the amp is broken. Yesterday, I opened the amp and find out another op-amp is fried.... To be honest, if I could replace the input board, I'll do it. Unfortunately, they are nowhere to be seen.
@@redking7051 - This probably isn't the right video to do it on, but I wanted to share a couple soldering tricks that I only learned this year, despite a lifetime of soldering... Low Melt Solder aka SMD Removal Alloy aka Indium solder. Use this in conjunction with Amtech 559 flux paste... components will literally fall off the board. The 559 flux causes any solder to flow so much better than either the rosin in the core of normal electronics solder, or the rosin in the de-soldering wick. Low Melt Solder can almost be melted just by breathing on it (lol - I joke, but not much), and it stays semi-liquid / gelatinous / extremely fragile for up to a minute after removing the heat. You can probably imagine how easy this makes it to remove multi pin / leg components compared to any method short of an electric vacuum pump de-soldering station. And even there, low melt solder improves the performance. Once you remove the components, be sure to fully clean off all the low melt solder with your de-solder wick & 559 flux before installing any replacements. It is not designed to be used as actual solder due to it's ridiculously low melting point, and extreme brittleness.
Really god Job don’t be disappointed you try you’re best If is any helping I saw something similar where one of the cables on the tilt was broken inside every time that it hits that point or that side replacing that cable fixed the problem Thank you for sharing you’re experience is always very helpful even when it can be fixed WE CANT SAVE THEM ALL
The build quality on that fixture looks almost impeccable to me. Rather unsurprising result, really. For something that complex, you need to have the right troubleshooting tools, unfortunately. Also, the schematics would've come in pretty handy (although, good luck finding them!).
The original ones make me less mad... it's always a risk to take on these jobs, for non-original fixtures you have nothing to refer to and simply sometimes you're able to solve it and other times you're not, you have to be good at making the person understand this customer, before taking a particular machine. I work in a service and repair my cars but I point this out to my superiors... I recently went crazy with LED bars made in China. I hope to sell them all and never see them again. I'm not too knowledgeable about electronics, sometimes I've even caused disasters 🤣but it's part of the game! In your case, since I see improvements even if small when you replaced the power supply, try measuring the output voltages at no load and on load, sometimes these chinas are assembled and barely work. Anyway, you're good, I have a lot of cars for you to repair in the warehouse!!
Bonjour, comme je sais que vous parlez français, ça sera plus simple pour moi. Pour moi le symptôme se répète mais aléatoirement donc pas toujours au même moment et je pencherais donc que le problème est du à cause de la colorwheel manquante qui ferait planter la gobo quand elle veut faire un changement de couleur pendant qu'elle fait ces cycles dont le mouvement de l'axe pan et freeze complètement la machine pendant un moment, faudrait essayer de swapper la colorwheel de celle qui fonctionne vers l'autre et réessayer, regarder aussi si la roue encodeuse ( roue dentelée sur le moteur du pan en question) ne serait pas endommagée comme une dent tordue ou manquante et ferait sauter des steps à la machine jusqu'à la faire décrocher de sa calibration initiale. Si tout ça est ok et toujours le problème, vérifier pour problème de câblage ( endommagé, mauvais contact au niveau des connecteurs ou resistance élevée d'un des câbles), vérifier également les câbles de communication entre carte. Si le problème persite malgré le changement de la colorwheel et de la vérification de tout les câbles 1 par 1, la panne est vraiment bizarre alors car le changement de casi tout les cartes n'a pas réglé le problème
Encore un autre problème qui pourrait y avoir dû justement à un problème de câble est la tension vous avez dit qu'au lieu d'avoir 24vdc à la carte du pan et tilt, il y avait 20vdc. Les 20vdc on été mesuré pendant que les moteurs ne tournaient pas donc déjà là faut se dire que quand les moteurs vont se mettre à fonctionner, la chute de tension va être encore plus forte voir même descendre trop bas et rendre la carte instable voir même bloquer la carte pan donc si le problème n'est pas la colorwheel comme j'ai dit dans le commentaire précédent, je me pencherais fort vers le câble défectueux, Julien.
Just buy a real Clay Paky instead of a Fake Paky. The real Alpha 1500s are really inexpensive used now (most likely less money than the China copy). I do have to say though, that's quite a convincing copy. It looks very similar internally and externally to the Alpha 1500 just not as well built and not as servicable as the real Clay Paky Alpha 1500. Also poor mover is like "WHERE IS MY COLOR WHEEL!" 🤣
I would never expect to see a copy of such a model! I admire your patience with this one, really!
I feel you bro with regard to the frustration on time and money spent on a project. What you need to do is charge the diags to the customer and send him back the working unit you purchased to keep them happy.
Take time off of it and resume this project, because when you do figure out the problem later on down the road, it will feel so so good.
Also, I’m not at all surprised on the difficulty in removing the parts from this thing. I’m inclined to say that it probably wasn’t because it was from a Chinese manufacturer, or it was engineered badly. I think it’s because these machines are incredibly complex, and have to fit a specific form factor, not to mention the harsh environments it has to operate in. Because of that, no amount of engineering would probably improve the serviceability of products like this.
I worked on a QSC K series speaker earlier this year. The fault was that the HF driver cut in and out, and the reason turned out to be that the amp / power supply board (both are on the same board) was covered in dried beer or soda (the actual HF driver was fine). I completely cleaned the board, reassembled everything, then ran it for 6-7 hours a day for a week as loud as I could stand in a private hallway outside my office. I even took it to a couple live shows & used it at nearly full volume. I gave it back to the customer, and 2 days later they brought it back, complaining of sparks &r smoke. Sure enough, one of the switching power supply MOSFETs was a perfect short, the board had a huge burn mark on it, and a bunch of the SMD components and traces were burnt away, just completely vaporized. The circuit board was totally FU-ed. Sometimes repairs just don't go as you hoped. In retrospect, I should have said that the board needed to be replaced the first time around. But it really did look cleanable, and it worked great for me for a much more extensive test than most technicians would have given it.
Anyway, those moving head lights, the wires go to sh!te after a while due to the continuous movement of the head. But it's a nightmare to track down which particular wire has failed (because the wire usually conducts in some positions, but not in others), and it's a nightmare to replace them all if you decide to go that route. I despise repairing moving head lights. You gave it a great attempt. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Thanks for the comments, I really appreciate. Funny enough, a similar thing happened to me this week with The peavey amplifier that I repaired 3 weeks ago on video. It was working fine for couple of days. So I decided to take it for rental to a friend of mine that wanted a little sounds system with plenty of bass. I could have used one of my trusty Camco amp but it would require 3u + 1u processor and quite a heavy road case. So I gave him the peavey because power output was enough and it has input filter. And guess what, couple hours later, he call me saying the amp is broken. Yesterday, I opened the amp and find out another op-amp is fried.... To be honest, if I could replace the input board, I'll do it. Unfortunately, they are nowhere to be seen.
@@redking7051 - This probably isn't the right video to do it on, but I wanted to share a couple soldering tricks that I only learned this year, despite a lifetime of soldering...
Low Melt Solder aka SMD Removal Alloy aka Indium solder. Use this in conjunction with Amtech 559 flux paste... components will literally fall off the board. The 559 flux causes any solder to flow so much better than either the rosin in the core of normal electronics solder, or the rosin in the de-soldering wick. Low Melt Solder can almost be melted just by breathing on it (lol - I joke, but not much), and it stays semi-liquid / gelatinous / extremely fragile for up to a minute after removing the heat. You can probably imagine how easy this makes it to remove multi pin / leg components compared to any method short of an electric vacuum pump de-soldering station. And even there, low melt solder improves the performance. Once you remove the components, be sure to fully clean off all the low melt solder with your de-solder wick & 559 flux before installing any replacements. It is not designed to be used as actual solder due to it's ridiculously low melting point, and extreme brittleness.
That is EXTREMELY HEAVY so that is why sometimes you need another person to help you lift a light that could be 100LBS+
Really god Job don’t be disappointed you try you’re best
If is any helping I saw something similar where one of the cables on the tilt was broken inside every time that it hits that point or that side
replacing that cable fixed the problem
Thank you for sharing you’re experience is always very helpful even when it can be fixed
WE CANT SAVE THEM ALL
The build quality on that fixture looks almost impeccable to me.
Rather unsurprising result, really. For something that complex, you need to have the right troubleshooting tools, unfortunately. Also, the schematics would've come in pretty handy (although, good luck finding them!).
The original ones make me less mad... it's always a risk to take on these jobs, for non-original fixtures you have nothing to refer to and simply sometimes you're able to solve it and other times you're not, you have to be good at making the person understand this customer, before taking a particular machine. I work in a service and repair my cars but I point this out to my superiors... I recently went crazy with LED bars made in China. I hope to sell them all and never see them again. I'm not too knowledgeable about electronics, sometimes I've even caused disasters 🤣but it's part of the game! In your case, since I see improvements even if small when you replaced the power supply, try measuring the output voltages at no load and on load, sometimes these chinas are assembled and barely work. Anyway, you're good, I have a lot of cars for you to repair in the warehouse!!
Bonjour, comme je sais que vous parlez français, ça sera plus simple pour moi. Pour moi le symptôme se répète mais aléatoirement donc pas toujours au même moment et je pencherais donc que le problème est du à cause de la colorwheel manquante qui ferait planter la gobo quand elle veut faire un changement de couleur pendant qu'elle fait ces cycles dont le mouvement de l'axe pan et freeze complètement la machine pendant un moment, faudrait essayer de swapper la colorwheel de celle qui fonctionne vers l'autre et réessayer, regarder aussi si la roue encodeuse ( roue dentelée sur le moteur du pan en question) ne serait pas endommagée comme une dent tordue ou manquante et ferait sauter des steps à la machine jusqu'à la faire décrocher de sa calibration initiale. Si tout ça est ok et toujours le problème, vérifier pour problème de câblage ( endommagé, mauvais contact au niveau des connecteurs ou resistance élevée d'un des câbles), vérifier également les câbles de communication entre carte. Si le problème persite malgré le changement de la colorwheel et de la vérification de tout les câbles 1 par 1, la panne est vraiment bizarre alors car le changement de casi tout les cartes n'a pas réglé le problème
Dam that huge lol😂
c'est monstrueux
Encore un autre problème qui pourrait y avoir dû justement à un problème de câble est la tension vous avez dit qu'au lieu d'avoir 24vdc à la carte du pan et tilt, il y avait 20vdc.
Les 20vdc on été mesuré pendant que les moteurs ne tournaient pas donc déjà là faut se dire que quand les moteurs vont se mettre à fonctionner, la chute de tension va être encore plus forte voir même descendre trop bas et rendre la carte instable voir même bloquer la carte pan donc si le problème n'est pas la colorwheel comme j'ai dit dans le commentaire précédent, je me pencherais fort vers le câble défectueux, Julien.
Mais nan vous parlez français 🤣 et moi qui essaie de traduire tout 😭
Just buy a real Clay Paky instead of a Fake Paky. The real Alpha 1500s are really inexpensive used now (most likely less money than the China copy). I do have to say though, that's quite a convincing copy. It looks very similar internally and externally to the Alpha 1500 just not as well built and not as servicable as the real Clay Paky Alpha 1500.
Also poor mover is like "WHERE IS MY COLOR WHEEL!" 🤣