Socket Burnout

Aaron McQueen

Aaron McQueen

Freshman
Dec 23, 2011
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We have a small lighting setup at my church with 8 ellipsoidals and several other led accent lights. Anyway the ellipsoidal are constant burning out the sockets. Is this just normal wear and tear and I should just budget to replace the sockets every year? Or am I doing something wrong? Is there anyway to reduce the socket burnout and make the sockets last longer? We have the LEO by NSI/Leviton LEO® > Ellipsoidals > Fixtures > Entertainment Lighting > Products from Leviton Electrical and Electronic Products
 
Re: Socket Burnout

Tim McCulloch said:
What does NSI/Leviton have to say about this? A phone call/email is in order, I think.
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I'll give them a call. So is this not normal?

I thought I had it figured out, because on the first one that wouldn't light up, the lamp was not fully seated. On the rest, I made sure they were full seated. Once the socket burns, there's really no way to clean it. The deposits are hard as a rock. The lamps don't blow, and I can usually save them by sanding the contacts with some sand paper.
 
Re: Socket Burnout

Aaron McQueen said:
I'll give them a call. So is this not normal?

I thought I had it figured out, because on the first one that wouldn't light up, the lamp was not fully seated. On the rest, I made sure they were full seated. Once the socket burns, there's really no way to clean it. The deposits are hard as a rock. The lamps don't blow, and I can usually save them by sanding the contacts with some sand paper.
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We have hundreds of Source4 fixtures at our PAC and I think we replace fewer than a dozen sockets a year. A certain number of failures will happen in any lamp socket design, but your experience could be from a bad batch of sockets, a poor design or foreign matter contamination of the lamp pins/socket contacts.
 
Re: Socket Burnout

Aaron McQueen said:
I'll give them a call. So is this not normal?

I thought I had it figured out, because on the first one that wouldn't light up, the lamp was not fully seated. On the rest, I made sure they were full seated. Once the socket burns, there's really no way to clean it. The deposits are hard as a rock. The lamps don't blow, and I can usually save them by sanding the contacts with some sand paper.
Click to expand...

Once you get a corroded socket the lamp is useless and the corrosion will travel. Do NOT reuse corroded lamps. When you replace the socket, replace the lamp.
 
Re: Socket Burnout

Jordan Lahr said:
Once you get a corroded socket the lamp is useless and the corrosion will travel. Do NOT reuse corroded lamps. When you replace the socket, replace the lamp.
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This.

You are having issues because the lamps are not getting seated fully. A poorly seated lamp will have arcing in the socket which will pit both the lamp base and the socket contacts. The pitted socket will arc with new lamps, and the pitted lamps will arc with new sockets. The fix is to replace lamp and socket, and make sure the lamps are fully seated.
 
Re: Socket Burnout

First gen of S4 lekos end up failing pretty heavily after awhile, and I'm guessing it's because they lacked the locking clamps to hold the lamp in to the socket, which later revisions have.
 
Yeah, there's no locking clamps on these fixtures. The lamps are just held in with the socket friction.

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