How often do your triacs go bad?

[rjnitto]

Any idea on what LOR support charges to replace triacs besides shipping. I've got a channel stuck in the on position and two with bad RG45 sockets? I could only use one of the controllers with the bad RG45 socket since you can only have one controller at the end of the daisy-chained line.

Richard

[plasmadrive]

For those that have lost triacs and can't or don't want to solder, if your units are not under warranty try going to the local high school or college and get a "tech in training" (mini geek) to do it for you. Pay em a bit to be fair. Those kids are pretty smart and many are pretty good at fixing, soldering and so on.

Just a thought.. Beats sending controllers back to LOR and paying shipping.

[TJ Hvasta]

because of all the triacs going bad (particularly in the G3 boards), LOR has been sending out replacements for free, quick too..

[james campbell]

how hard are traics to replace/ novice at best at soldering

[Ken Benedict]

There's other threads that discuss triac replacement, but most of those people are experienced in soldering and such. It's one of those technical things that if it goes wrong, you could cause some damage to your controller and let out some of that Secret Smoke.

If you can't find some technical person to help, you might want to send your controller in to LOR and have their techs fix it. That's what they do all day long.

[stanward]

Just had another triac go out tonight. A CTB16PC controller purchased this year (gen 2).

[Guest guest]

ngoodart wrote:

Dont Forget could be the Opto as well, This is my first year running 32 channels. Dropped a channel right away. If youhave access to the board in the enlosure you can "short" the Triac legs together to see if its the Triac or the opto causing you difficulties.... This information came from the help desk: here is thier reply to my Ticket...You can check the triac as follows but be very careful. The center pin of the triac get power in. One side (the gate side) is attached to the opto isolator via a resistor and the other side is output. If you use a small screw driver and carefully make sure you are only touching the insulated handle you can connect the center pin to the gate pin. If the triac is working then this will trigger the gate and the output will come on.

HTH

Somehow I missed the above the first time through.

First off I can't believe someone at a help desk would actually recommend doing something like this! I've worked at help desks, and if anyone gave out info to do something like this, well that would make the company liable for a persons death if they did it and cooked themselves. I really have a hard time believing anyone at LOR would tell someone to do this.

I'm not and wouldn't even try this one and I'm comfortable with working with 120VAC LIVE current! (I did something similar on a job a long time ago, see the end of this post for what happened).

How would someone know which pin is which on a Triac? Is it labeled where you can read/see it on the PCB in the enclosure in the case of a purchased fully assembled unit?

Most folks don't know this stuff unless they've worked in the electronics field or do a lot of electronics kit building to learn electronics skills on their own. Many wouldn't even know how to locate or find the information on electronic components.

The left side and right side the triacs are mounted opposite each other, so how would someone know which two pins they should be shorting?

Which I'd never recommend anyone try this myself, not unless you are well insulated with insulated gloves, shoes and tool used to do the shorting. And are comfortable working with LIVE 120VAC Voltages. Otherwise, if you don't know what you're doing or are uncomfortable working with LIVE 120VAC or higher Voltages you're liable to meet your maker doing this! Again, absolutely NOT RECOMMENDED!)

If one purchased fully assembled controllers, then they may not know which side is which on a Triac, those that built their own controllers probably do know what a Triacs pin out actually is.

And what happens if you were to short the "output" to the center pin instead of the gate? Just a blown triac or worse? I'm thinking a lot worse if the incorrect pins were shorted, mainly because of experiences from my work in electronics in the past.(see below for what happened on a job I was on years ago)

I did something very similar to this at work many years ago under a technicians guidance, and he got the pin out wrong. Fried the whole damn board, was a nice fireworks show, let out a whole lot of that secret smoke that doesn't smell too good when it escapes. Popped and blew diodes, capacitors, IC chips, resistors and anything else that got in it's path. Burnt the board to a crisp, total destruction of the PCB, traces and a wide assortment of components as well as fried any boards attached to it. And Yes, I was well insulated and so were the tools used, but shorting out the wrong pins on some things can cause bigger issues or worse, start a fire or possibly even kill you if you don't really know what you're doing. Needless to say, that Tech lost his job that day.

And I never did that again!

That was very scary having parts blowing up, yes, literally exploding, sparks and flames shooting out and off that circuit card everywhere! And there was smoke everywhere too! The smell was so bad that we had to evacuate the building. It took several hours to air it out with hurricae type exhaust fans before we could go back in and get back to work.

That's why I'm really hard pressed to believe anyone at LOR would actually tell someone to do this type of thing.

[Richard R]

Hi Guys
my season has now ended and I have checked all of my controllers and I have 27 failed triac's and they are all on the new G3 CPB16's my 2 1602 controllers were running the same lights and they worked perfectly.
also the CPB16's will not reset, I have tried several times with no success,has anyone else tried resetting the G3 controllers

[stanward]

That can't be attributed to rain alone. It has to be a manufacture defect. Why did LOR lie to me about the manufacture defect? 27 failed triacs is terrible for one year alone! I had about 12 or so failed triacs this year.

Richard R wrote:

Hi Guys
my season has now ended and I have checked all of my controllers and I have 27 failed triac's and they are all on the new G3 CPB16's my 2 1602 controllers were running the same lights and they worked perfectly.
also the CPB16's will not reset, I have tried several times with no success,has anyone else tried resetting the G3 controllers

[Richard R]

you can't be attributed it to rain at all, as where I live in New Zealand we have had little rain and as I said my 1602's had NO problem at all

[Guest guest]

Remind me not to purchase any G3 CTB16PC contrrollers until real late 2012 or early 2013.

[Richard R]

Orville wrote:

Remind me not to purchase any G3 CTB16PC contrrollers until real late 2012 or early 2013.

at least we can be happy that LOR stand behind their product,
In that knowledge I will be quite happy to continue buying from LOR:cool:

[Bob Hall]

Orville wrote:

Remind me not to purchase any G3 CTB16PC contrrollers until real late 2012 or early 2013.

As someone who plans on purchasing one of those this year, I'm getting a kick out of that reply.:shock::shock:

[Guest guest]

That's why that comment had this little character at the end:

I'm actually planning on either buying another CTB16PC Controller or a couple of DC Controllers this year myself. Chances are I'm going to get 2 DC controllers so I can hack the store bought LEDs I still have that work and use them on my vehicle!:cool:

And I agree, LOR is awesome when it comes to standing behind their product lines!:cool:

[DrWizard]

I lost 1 triac 3 years ago, and 2 more last year. So now I have 3 bad ones in my CTB16D. I ordered some more triacs from Digikey and am about to install them soon. I am good at soldering and this is no big deal to me.

My question is: What is the simplest set of steps to get the board out of the CTB16D's metal box so I can work on it? What do I need to or not need to remove? In what order? No doubt I could figure it out, I'm mechanically inclined as well, but I'm sure someone out there has already done this a bunch of times and can tell me the quickest, easiest way.

[Guest wbottomley]

I would take it out of the box by unbolting it. Then replace the bad triacs and place it back in the enclosure.

[BillyT]

To me, the hardest part in changing out triacs was removing all the wires and replacing them once i was done. It ends up taking an hour to do less than 5 minutes of board work

[LOR Staff]

FYI....

(First some butt covering: This may not apply to you. This may not apply AT ALL. I'm not making excuses. I'm relating personal experience. I have no experience with G3 controllers - the ones with phantom loads. You can always get an official response from the help desk system, since I am not a hardware tech.)

Not having ENOUGH load on a triac can make it appear as if it is bad. There needs to be enough load to fully pull the gate to 0, or else a triac will sometimes (and that's key >SOMETIMES<) leak voltage. For example, you can't test if a triac is bad by checking the voltage between hot and neutral. If there is no load attached, the output could be floating anywhere between 0 and line voltage. That's why sometimes a snubber or other load is needed on an LED string: there simply is not enough load to latch the gate.

To ensure you really have a bad channel, hook up a regular 60w bulb (a table lamp works great) to the channel and test it. If it works you may have a too-little load issue.

[Max-Paul]

DevMike,

Just for your information. Back a few years ago, a user either here on this forum or over on PC did a great write up with snap shots of his digital O scope showing different wave forms. The wave form distorted with more LED load and less with just one string of 50ct M5 or M6. Believe it or not, but LED have a capacitive component and the XC was causing havoc with the wave form. By adding a resistive load, the charge is drained off of the string faster and returning the wave form back to something closer to what is seen when a resistive load is applied to the circuit. Such as when Ican lamps are used.

[LOR Staff]

I've seen that as well, and it was a definite shocker to see the waveforms.