pyromill Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 Just a fyi... google bad batches of triacs and up pops tons of Christmas related sites. One of which tells a little of bad productions lots. along with some results of testing shows that there is a heck of alot of bad triacs out there.. and that st micro started to fix things around a date code of CHN010 on the triacs... now saying that I have had yet another failed triac not sure the date code on the failed off hand but the other pc kit I have inside has part # bta16-600bw date code (last line on the triac) chn 943 both bought at the same time. I'm willing to bet alot of us have faulty triacs under the manu country and date code of CHN 010 .. reply's with codes would be nice to see if we have a trend here.. replacing triacs failed with st bta26 700bw with code mar517 so far not a single triac I have replaced has failed in 4 years of replacing faulty ones.edit: went and changed out controllers before posting.. coming inside bad controller has bta16-600bw chn 943 so hopefully the controller I put out there with the same triacs will last a few hours. At this point I have little faith left in triac's and have roughly 200 spares on hand.. iron at the ready to replace faulted triacs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pyromill Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 One more thing. on the channels that have died have been anywhere from a single c9 to 4 100count strands. no where NEAR overload. far as moisture goes... look at the thread I posted.. I am thinking faulty product of st at no fault to lor but their stuck in the same place as us and the diy community. out of spec for production parts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffl Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 I have been lucky as well. Been through over 45 controllers both kits I built and pre built and never had one fail yet.There was a lot of talk of this happening on the doityourselfChristmas.com site for a group by they did few years ago. I would guess if it did happen that it would be a batch of them that would be bad.I think LOR did have this type of problem earlier this year with the gen3 units and had to switch components. Luckily LOR corrected things before they started shipping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stanward Posted December 11, 2011 Author Share Posted December 11, 2011 Thank you everyone for your replies. I'm hoping my luck turns around next year. Replacing faulty Triacs are no fun at all even tho it takes me approximately 30min to replace one. I could dedicate my time elsewhere....like re-synchronizing new songs for this year's show! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pyromill Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 stanward wrote: Thank you everyone for your replies. I'm hoping my luck turns around next year. Replacing faulty Triacs are no fun at all even tho it takes me approximately 30min to replace one. I could dedicate my time elsewhere....like re-synchronizing new songs for this year's show!depending what heat sink you have.. I'll give a tip, low power just unbolt the bad triac and snip or bend and break the legs makes it alot quicker! the high power good luck unbolt 8 of them.. but still snip the legs and desolder braid from there.. heat the leg pull the leg out clean up the mess. A tip from a electronics repair tech I'll never forget as its many times quicker than trying to get that last bit of solder holding a pin in the board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
papap Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 Pyromill. If I got this right. You snip the legs off right under the triacs Then suck the solder off back side. Then heat leg and pull it from back side. I have the high powered heat sink. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stanward Posted December 11, 2011 Author Share Posted December 11, 2011 After snipping the Triac off of it's legs, you could also heat each leg individually and pull the leg off with a long-nosed pliers. Then you can use a desoldering tool to remove the leftover solder.I purchased a desoldering iron, so removing the triacs are now effortless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EARLE W. TALLEY Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 pyromill, where do we get the GOOD triacs ??Earle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Benedict Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 Firing up a triac first thing in a show, fully on with a cold load puts quite a load on the triac. Instantaneous surge can be several times the load on the line, causing triac overload.In theatre, we pre-heat lighting to 5-8 percent for a few minutes before a show to warm things up. Very few problems when doing it that way.My LOR show, fully up draws over 60 amps. I found out that pre-heating the mini-lights to a small percentage at the start of the very first sequence in the show prevents the breaker from tripping. Its 240 volt, 40 amps per leg. Even with 80 amps available, it can trip on a cold startup. My first sequence is an all-on for two seconds, then gets going with the music. See Another solution is to replace the triac with a more robust one, like a BTA41-600B which is rated at 40 amps, more that the 16 amp ratings of the existing ones. For you technical types, the gate trigger current is the same, so the existing opto drivers work OK. I have done this with several "DJ" type dimmers very successfully. Having this "elbow room" is like an insurance policy, just in case of a heavy instantaneous load.As others have listed above, snip the triac leads very close to the triac body and unsolder each of the three leads. You can use either a solder sucker or desoldering braid to open the holes back up.See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desoldering_braid#Solder_wickTriacs:http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/BTA41-600BRG/?qs=CkbNAJEAr%2fQw0ISg%252bSlP2w%3d%3dorhttp://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_1384675_-1orhttp://www.newark.com/stmicroelectronics/bta41-600brg/triac-600v-40a-top-3/dp/89K1245?Ntt=bta41-600borhttp://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?lang=en&site=us&KeyWords=bta41-600b&x=0&y=0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 2 of my 3 of my failures have been on LED channels, so zero inrush at play. And with high power heatsinks. Thinking about it, the two this year were before any of the rain. And, only 1/4 of an amp, so only running 1/64 of the rated power. One more odd coincidence. The one last year was red incandescent, with roughly 2A per channel. The two this year were also Red.Sometimes you just never figure out why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Benedict Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 -klb- did your LED channels have a small constant current transformer or just resistors?Just curious about small amounts of inductive kickback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stanward Posted December 11, 2011 Author Share Posted December 11, 2011 Those larger triacs have a different case, not the standard TO-220. I don't think they will just pop into the existing hole pattern on the LOR boards?Ken Benedict wrote:Another solution is to replace the triac with a more robust one, like a BTA41-600B which is rated at 40 amps, more that the 16 amp ratings of the existing ones. For you technical types, the gate trigger current is the same, so the existing opto drivers work OK. I have done this with several "DJ" type dimmers very successfully. Having this "elbow room" is like an insurance policy, just in case of a heavy instantaneous load.Triacs:http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/BTA41-600BRG/?qs=CkbNAJEAr%2fQw0ISg%252bSlP2w%3d%3dorhttp://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_1384675_-1orhttp://www.newark.com/stmicroelectronics/bta41-600brg/triac-600v-40a-top-3/dp/89K1245?Ntt=bta41-600borhttp://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?lang=en&site=us&KeyWords=bta41-600b&x=0&y=0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Ken Benedict wrote:-klb- did your LED channels have a small constant current transformer or just resistors?Just curious about small amounts of inductive kickback.They are minleon dimmable C7 retrofit, so fully resistive limiting. I'm fact, they will work as phantom load to clear up fading issues where having 20 LED strings on the same wire frame fading in parallel otherwise starts to fail to fade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBullard Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 EARLE W. TALLEY wrote:pyromill, where do we get the GOOD triacs ??Earlehttp://www.mouser.com/Search/Refine.aspx?Keyword=BTA16-600BW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Young Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 -klb- wrote: 2 of my 3 of my failures have been on LED channels, so zero inrush at play. And with high power heatsinks. Thinking about it, the two this year were before any of the rain. And, only 1/4 of an amp, so only running 1/64 of the rated power. One more odd coincidence. The one last year was red incandescent, with roughly 2A per channel. The two this year were also Red.Sometimes you just never figure out why.There is always the possibility of a bad batch of semiconductor component elements that have been used to design the triacs, etc we rely on.It could be simply contaminents in the production process. That could effect thousands of final production components.Consider where these components are being manufactured...:shock: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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