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Author Topic: Pennywise Does not like Xenon Strike Ken McFall Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 615 From: Haringey, London. Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-13-2003 09:04 AM                     Hi Guys, Recently install a Pennywise CA21 into one of our screens. I have completely rewired the Vic 5 with a new wiring tray and all electrics and it all works beautifully.... however! Every now and then when the show starts it shuts down as the xenon strikes. This is an old problem and I cured it at my last theatre with TA10's by fitting the sheild that component engineering supply. With the CA21's I have fitted ferrit cores on everything, status boards included but still have this problem. I should add it happens in one of our other screens that has been automated for some time. I know it's the CA21 that's causing the shut downs as even if I start the projector manually on its control panel it may shut down when the xenon strikes. Turn off the CA21 and eveything is fine. At the moment I am having to use the existing trunking on the front wall that has everything running thru it, including sound! I am moving the sound to its own high level trunking as I progress with the installation of new wiring but should I consider seperating everything into it's own trunking or flexible copex etc. Is there anything else I can try? I've emailed Pennywise twice recently but they don't seem to like replying. Any suggestions would be appreciated.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-13-2003 10:02 AM                     Go to the root of the problem the igniton supress it right at the ignitor I am assuming you have a cinemecanica lamphouse and there are 2 different ignitors used in them there own that mounted down the length of the lamphouse and an Irem box style Put several .01uf 10,000v ceramic disk capacitors between the AC hot and neutral AC hot and ground and neutral and ground And do the same on the DC + to- + to ground and -to ground Also adding 2 torroid style inductors in the AC feed can help And while at it run a dedicated ground from the lamphouse to the panel and also a dedicated for the automation One must remember that most ignitors eceed the legal noise limit by many fold  |  IP: Logged Fabrice Dubourg Film Handler Posts: 43 From: Granville, France Registered: Feb 2003 posted 06-13-2003 10:50 AM                     your probleme is not on your CA21 but on your lamphouse and seems to be a cinemeccanica. i installed a few CA21 and this problem occurs only with cinemeccanica igniter. if you can't solve the problem with an upgrade of your igniter (witch is the better thing to do like Gordon said) youcan try this: put a 10nF/24V capacitor on all inputs if you use a cue detector, put a relay on its output to separate signal (put your relay in CA21), if not, CA21 can jump over prog. lines. "energy" created by striking the lamp goes in all cables. an easy test to do to see the problem: swith on and open the CA21, swith off the light in projection booth, strike the lamp and at the same time take a look at the inputs leds (it should look like a chrismas tree!!!)  |  IP: Logged Ken McFall Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 615 From: Haringey, London. Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-13-2003 12:15 PM                     Thanks for that Gordon and Fabrice.... Yes they are Cnemeccanica lamphouses and they don't use Irem ignitors. But it's not the open long type that they used in their earlier lamp houses. These are slightly smaller than the standard Irem with a built in lamp fail relay and push on terminal block. The lamphouse is the CX21H on an Irem rectifier. Can't remember the make of the ignitor off the top of my head. I'll give the cap's a try when I get the chance. I knew what the problem was but had never come across it quite so bad. The original install of the projectors would not have been how I would have done it everything cramped into one common trunking. Cheers  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 06-13-2003 12:48 PM                     I had this problem before and in my case a fault was discovered in the way the failsafe/cue detector (Component Engineering FM-35) had been connected to the Pennywise CA-21. I do not recall precisely what was wrong but it involved the Film Presence and Film Motion features. Once I reconnected things properly the problem went away. The symptom was that when the Xenon struck, the system shut down and I got a "FBR" error message in the CA-21 display. The problem, however, had nothing to do with the Xenon lamp. It just happened that the time it takes for the failsafe to "kick in" coincided with the striking of the Xenon. It's a longshot that we'd have the same problem but...who knows?...This could help if you come up with no troubles in your Xenon system. It took about a week's worth of troubleshooting to solve that one. Maybe it would've taken less time if the wiring hadn't been so messy.  |  IP: Logged Ken McFall Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 615 From: Haringey, London. Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-13-2003 01:07 PM                     Hi Manny, yes thats exactly what I'm getting. However I'd discarded the FM35 as the film in the projector had only moved a couple of feet. If it was the FM35's motion or presence the film would have run much longer as the CA21 allows time for the projector to stabalise. However if the xenon strike is causing the projector to stop the film break alarm would kick in after a few seconds. The other thing that removes the FM35 from the equation is that it is not used at all in manual mode. I decided on this so if the FM35 did develope a problem during a show we could always run the projector manually with no problems. I will however check it all out again just in case as it may be a contibutory factor on the machine I didn't do the install on. Suppresion is the answer I guess so its down to a morning fitting the cap's and testing testing testing. Cheers guys.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 06-13-2003 02:47 PM                     This doesn't sound like your problem, but I'll mention it anyway as a general FYI to remember when working with the CA21. The CA21s will run for X amount of seconds to account for a "bobble" in your failsafe before shutting down once the AUTO START command has been initiated. (This is a configurable time delay.) During this bobble time, the automation ignores the lamp fault circuit. It is designed to have a photocell connected to monitor and ensure the xenon actually lit. If it does not sense light by X bobble delay time, it will shut down the automation. You can simply jumper #61 and 62 on the interface board to bypass that option. If your xenon is slow to strike, that could trip the circuit (however I don't think this fits your specific scenario).  |  IP: Logged Ken McFall Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 615 From: Haringey, London. Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-13-2003 03:41 PM                     Thanks Brad, anything is worth a try. As I say the shutdown is happening too quickly to be a normal motion or xenon failure. The film has barely moved two feet. The versoion of the firmware we have allows us to disable the xenon fail.... but like everything else I'll try anything on the off chance.. Thanks again for your time.  |  IP: Logged Rick Long Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 759 From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada Registered: Nov 1999 posted 06-13-2003 09:47 PM                     I think one of the first things I would try to determine is whether the emf pulse causing the automation to stop the equipment, is airbourne or linebourne. Have you tried removing the leads for "lamp ON" from the automation and then firing the lamp manually yourself at a later point in time? If the program continues to run normally, we might assume that the interfering pulse is getting in via these terminals. Pi-filtering the input might do the trick. We might assume that since the pulse emminates from the lamp ignitor, that it is high-frequency in nature. Putting a small (.05uf) capacitor across these lamp ON terminals as well as from each of the terminals to ground might be worth a try.  |  IP: Logged Bernard Tonks Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 619 From: Cranleigh, Surrey, England Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-14-2003 04:20 AM                     When I installed a budget 5kw dimmer factory direct! which were fitted mainly in hotels, you could have as many remote stations you wanted, in my case I only wanted one remote. On the first show when both xenon’s struck, the Cinemation automation jumped a line therefore missing the first pulse of the programme. I got in touch with the dimmer makers in Wiltshire, who recommended screening the remote station lead. I went one better than that, and fitted on board relays. Strange things happen in projection rooms. Good Luck Ken. BTW In case you missed me mentioning before as it was a very late post. Many changeovers ago I did a one-day relief in your main screen, then called the Pullman, which seem to run an endless diet of Westerns. The projectors were BTH SUPA mark 2 with the later BTH carbon autoarc in the same livery that AEI adapted for xenon. I rather liked them as they had round spool boxes compared to the elephant looking mark 1s. Later the cinema became the Classic, then Little Bit Ritzy, which by then had a Westar / Westrex projector & tower installation serviced by Billy Bell.  |  IP: Logged Peter Hall Master Film Handler Posts: 314 From: London, UK Registered: Dec 2000 posted 06-14-2003 07:35 AM                        Hi - A couple of thoughts in case they're of interest.. Sounds like the problem is noise being generated by the ignitor. I guess you have eliminated (by disconnecting) individual lines into the CA21 (FM35, xenon sense, xenon control) to verify that the problem is intrinsic with the CA21 rather than coming from one source ? Is the power for the ignitor being fed from the 300w output (pins C and D) of the IREM or off the mains ? We usually wire lamphouses to real mains to allow the fans to overrun after the lamp is off, however using C and D adds some isolation (the 220v is somewhere between phases S and T, and has no hard connection to Neutral) and does reduce noise if it occurrs. Or look at changing the power supply of the CA21 to another phase ? Anyway, I would not reccomend using any part of a small animal of any description to suppress noise - this is both inhumane and messy (ref your post, first message, when you said you were using Ferrit cores - tis cold comfort to the Ferrit family that their loved ones are being used for noise suppression at the Ritzy !).. Dont use either a hammer or corkscrew for either of these jobs - drivers, a meter, crimps and cable should suffice.. Peter  |  IP: Logged Ken McFall Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 615 From: Haringey, London. Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-14-2003 01:03 PM                     I knew it would only be a matter of time Peter... as for my spelling, well thats deteriorating with age I guess. Yes it's the ignitor and time is always a problem when you have to run the department at the same time. I working thru it all at a pace I can manage and still leave a working system in place. The ignitor is fed from the rectifier and the fan is fed from the mains direct as is our usual practice. The internals of the vic's are a bit of a mess what with the original wiring and end sequence, then automations added on in three screens. So I'm stripping it all out and starting from scratch. The job just keeps getting bigger and bigger.... I just love a challenge. Now if I could just leave the lamp off all the time I'd be finished next week Bernard, it's all Cinemeccanica now and of course two DLP projectors. Never even turned on the DLP in screen one yet. Things are getting a bit of a face lift now with the new owners... so we'll see what the future has to offer. [ 06-16-2003, 08:32 AM: Message edited by: Ken McFall ]  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 06-16-2003 07:02 AM                        Ken McFall wrote: quote: ...and of course two DLP projectors. Never even turned on the DLP in screen one yet. Is it for a lack of product available digitally?  |  IP: Logged Ken McFall Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 615 From: Haringey, London. Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-16-2003 08:27 AM                     Hi John, since I've been there, February this year, we've not been asked to use it. I'm not sure of what the position is regarding Digital at the moment. It all seems to have died down. From my own point of view I cannot see the point of having it if the equipment is not in use 52/7. Also if the film opens in Digital and only runs a week in that screen whats the point of it. We still have to make up a print to have as a standby and indeed use when the film moves down a screen. The other thing is I've had no training on how to use it at all, I don't even know how to turn it on. I doubt there's anything on the server to run anyway. Not too sure what's happening with it right now.... The other DLP is used for video screenings and festivals etc. Quite impressed with the picture quality all in all but like all things new and high tech there are a few things we need to make the most of it.. bottom line is spending the money and getting a return on it. The new owners are investing money in the department with the automation and other work so it comes down to priority. When I do get to see the DLP running I'll pass on my comments. ========================= Just had a reply from Pennywise who have sugessted fitting a de-coupling capacitor to the motherboard. I'll give it a try and let you know the results.  |  IP: Logged

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