Re: Getaway Mars Lamp/Triac Help

On Oct 7, 2:38 pm, turbo20lbs <turbo20...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ok I've gone a little deeper.  It looks like the triac board is fine
and output is around 15-16v.  Once you get to the resistor board
though it drops to 10v coming out of that board.  So is it possible
the resistors are "resisting" too much.  There are two of them, both
rated at 1 Ohm, 10W, 5%.  I measured them with meter and I'm getting
1.5 Ohms+ on each one.  I'm going to see if I can replace them so I
can get the output back to 12-13v.

Thanks

Dave

On Oct 7, 12:14 pm, PinAffliction <s.to...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



The triac is essentially used as a solid state AC compatible switch in
this application, a mechanical relay would have worked just as good.
Triacs are essentially two SCRs of opposite polarity put in parallel,
one used for each polarity of the AC waveform.
It is possible you are only getting half of the AC waveform through
the triac, which would cause the AC motor in the beacon to run slow
and/or stop and stutter.
You could just jumper across the triac and see if the motor runs ok,
if so, it's likely time for a rework of the triac board.
BTW, the manual is incorrect, it states 48VAC is used at the Mars
Lamp, it is actually the 20VAC tapped from the input of BR4 on the
power driver board.

Scott

 On Oct 7, 1:27 am, turbo20lbs <turbo20...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,

I have a Getaway that has a brand new beacon motor in it and the lamp
(also brand new).  I was wondering if anyone could tell me what
voltage you measured with the light and motor on.  It seems possible
mine is not getting enough voltage to work 100% of the time.  It has
trouble "starting up" sometimes but this is fairly rare.  I measured
the voltage at the lamp terminations with the lamp OUT and the motor
works perfect 100%, measured about 14v.  Once I put the lamp in that
voltage drops down below 10v (9.5ish).  Is this normal operation and
enough volts for the motor to start up flawlessly?  The motor and lamp
are listed as 12v units so this makes me wonder if something is wrong
with triac.  I decided to take the triac board off, and it looks like
the triac has been replaced or "reflowed" by looking at the underside
where the solder points are.  All it says on the triac is "SK3633".
So I'm not sure if that's the original one or the right one as listed
in the manual (Q1-Triac ISL 400V 10A).  Also for shits, I took the
rotating portion of the assembly off, and left the bulb in, and the
motor still got stuck once with nothing attached to it.

I'd really like to figure this out and fix this as it is bugging the
hell out of me now and Bojo is picking it up during Expo time.

Thanks,

Dave- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I just measured the resistors with both connectors on each side of the
resistor board disconnected.

Each one measures exactly 1 Ohm so that is probably your issue.

On another note, while measuring the connector at the mars light/motor
I get a reading of 9.45V"DC" , one is a constant 9.45VDC and the other
is 9.45VDC when the light/motor is on.
I measured with one probe on the wire and the other to ground.

My question is why is there DC riding on the AC?
Is it because of the SCRs being in the circuit?

I actually hooked up a 12VDC strobe unit on the "switched" wire and it
works great.

Think I'm going to put it on the underside of supercharger cover for
cool multiball effects.

Turbo-
Sorry to semi-hijac the thread but I thought it was odd to have such
high DC voltages riding on a AC line.....maybe not.


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