First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

T

TJ Cornish

Graduate
Jan 13, 2011
1,263
1
0
St. Paul, MN
I have a couple movers that I use mostly for painting on stage backdrops (don't/can't use haze), and as such, I suspect I am more sensitive to certain issues than the average person who primarily uses them for beam effects.

Anyway, since the fixture was new, one of my fixtures has had trouble with one of the gobo wheels coming back to the same place - depending on which gobo, sometimes I would have to re-aim the fixture to get it in the right place. It's been in and out of the shop a couple times, but the shop never found the issue. I was suspecting that the stepper motor was losing steps or there was some electrical issue, but recently I needed to get inside the fixture for another error, so I tried to dig into it.

It turns out that the gobo wheel is riveted to the hub, and the rivets were loose, allowing the gobo wheel to move a degree or two. After disassembling half the fixture to get to it, the fix took about 8 seconds with a punch to make the rivets tighter.
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It turns out that the other error I was having (gobo index sensor) was the sensor being too far away, which was solved by bending the bracket closer.

This was a good exercise for me for a couple reasons - I'm now much less scared of working on the fixtures, and I have been reminded that I need to think about the mechanical side of things, too, and not automatically assume the issue is a complicated electrical/software problem.
 
Re: First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

Which fixture was this? Moving heads are a very mechanical device. Being able to repair them on your own will save significant $$ vs shipping them off for service, especially for simple mechanical failure. The heat of the lamps inside can wreak havoc on certain materials. Cheaper units that use cheaper plastics can become problematic pretty quickly. More expensive units usually use higher quality components internally designed to last that length of time.
 
Re: First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

Brian jojade said:
Which fixture was this? Moving heads are a very mechanical device. Being able to repair them on your own will save significant $$ vs shipping them off for service, especially for simple mechanical failure. The heat of the lamps inside can wreak havoc on certain materials. Cheaper units that use cheaper plastics can become problematic pretty quickly. More expensive units usually use higher quality components internally designed to last that length of time.
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These are VL-770s. This particular one has had the gobo fault since it was new - I'm very excited to have that solved finally - it was REALLY frustrating.

A partner company has started buying Martin Mac Quantums and I rented a few recently. The LED light source is a big deal, and the Quantum Profile is a pretty sweet fixture, though I like the VL gobos better. I'm on the fence about investing in more VLs or switching the inventory over to something LED-based. It seems to me that the holy grail will be when they can get enough output out of a multi-colored LED source so the color wheels aren't needed - that will greatly simplify the fixture.
 
Re: First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

TJ Cornish said:
These are VL-770s. This particular one has had the gobo fault since it was new - I'm very excited to have that solved finally - it was REALLY frustrating.

A partner company has started buying Martin Mac Quantums and I rented a few recently. The LED light source is a big deal, and the Quantum Profile is a pretty sweet fixture, though I like the VL gobos better. I'm on the fence about investing in more VLs or switching the inventory over to something LED-based. It seems to me that the holy grail will be when they can get enough output out of a multi-colored LED source so the color wheels aren't needed - that will greatly simplify the fixture.
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For as crappy as Martin's cases have gotten lately, their fixtures at least don't have the random quirks of the VLs. Oh the stories I could tell...
 
Re: First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

Tim McCulloch said:
"Quirky" is polite.
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The Mac2K is just a downright pain. That's not what I mean by quirky.

The reason I'm frustrated with Vari-Lite is that you're paying an extraordinary amount of money for a light that does 95% of the things you want. The other 5%? Well, the flag looks a little funky; the iris just makes too much noise; that macro might crash the fixture... I wouldn't mind it doing these sorts of things if they weren't the premium product that they are and so good in the many other areas that they excell in. It just feels like they never made that final effort to make their products not only superior, but as good as it gets.
 
Re: First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

Max Warasila said:
The Mac2K is just a downright pain. That's not what I mean by quirky.

The reason I'm frustrated with Vari-Lite is that you're paying an extraordinary amount of money for a light that does 95% of the things you want. The other 5%? Well, the flag looks a little funky; the iris just makes too much noise; that macro might crash the fixture... I wouldn't mind it doing these sorts of things if they weren't the premium product that they are and so good in the many other areas that they excell in. It just feels like they never made that final effort to make their products not only superior, but as good as it gets.
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Now that the mechanics of moving lights are more mature it's possible to design new fixtures very quickly. The result is that the $10,000 mover you bought last year, that is only 25% recouped, is now obsolete. There is no reason to finesse a product to completion when its competitor is already being prototyped and is 120 days from entering production.
 
Re: First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

Tim McCulloch said:
"Quirky" is polite.
Click to expand...
Since I'm one of those "has a day job" people, I don't have a high number of shows to amortize the cost of expensive things over, and used gear can be tempting. Looking around, used prices of Mac2000s and Mac 250 Entours are pretty close, even though the new price of the Mac2K was something like 8X what the Entour cost. Maybe there's a message there? :)

During my conversation with the Vari-Lite tech folks, I asked what was different between my mid-2012 VL-770 fixtures and current VL-770s. He replied that he didn't know, as VL is constantly making changes to the fixtures. I guess I'm happy that VL is still making this model as I need support for my current gear for a while yet, but it does seem like they have done some "prototyping on the fly".

I'm off right now to my first show with the repaired VL-770. I'm excited to finally have the fixture work as designed (hopefully), and am looking forward to being able to use focus palette settings, rather than having to fudge the focus for each different gobo setting.
 
Re: First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

TJ Cornish said:
Since I'm one of those "has a day job" people, I don't have a high number of shows to amortize the cost of expensive things over, and used gear can be tempting. Looking around, used prices of Mac2000s and Mac 250 Entours are pretty close, even though the new price of the Mac2K was something like 8X what the Entour cost. Maybe there's a message there? :)

During my conversation with the Vari-Lite tech folks, I asked what was different between my mid-2012 VL-770 fixtures and current VL-770s. He replied that he didn't know, as VL is constantly making changes to the fixtures. I guess I'm happy that VL is still making this model as I need support for my current gear for a while yet, but it does seem like they have done some "prototyping on the fly".

I'm off right now to my first show with the repaired VL-770. I'm excited to finally have the fixture work as designed (hopefully), and am looking forward to being able to use focus palette settings, rather than having to fudge the focus for each different gobo setting.
Click to expand...

In our market it's very difficult to get realistic prices on moving light rentals. I doubt we get 25% of cost back in rental each year. Our market it big enough to have major market tastes and design work but not big enough to create the revenue stream needed. We look at movers as more of an accommodation than profit center.

The primary frustration is brought out in your conversation with VL... these things aren't consistent from build to build and not all parts are common to all production of a model. But you gotta have 'em...
 
Re: First adventure repairing a moving light fixture

I'm happy to report that my repaired VL worked perfectly last night. Kudos to the VL tech support guy that pointed me in the right direction.
 
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