General Forum

Re: LC1 with halogen lamp

tournedos — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:25:01 GMT

I'm not familiar with the internal design of these dimmers - but from general knowledge, if they get hotter with larger loads, they will probably fail sooner.

Re: LC1 with halogen lamp

leogenghis — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:47:56 GMT

Thanks for the replies everyone. I have one more question which would probably be an easy answer for someone who knows about circuitry! Since the LC1 is no longer produced I'd like to treat it as gently as possible. Does the amount of wattage connected to the LC1 affect its lifespan? In other words, would connecting 100W make it last, say 10 years relative to 200W, 5 years? (Its maximum capacity is 225W)

Thanks so much.

Leo

Re: LC1 with halogen lamp

tournedos — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:17:05 GMT

dko7113:
I have now looked at the transformer, and not being an expert, I think this is traditional.
It is in a white plastic box, which measure approx 12 x 12 x 12 cm. I believe electronic transformers are the long slim ones...

Sounds like a conventional transformer to me - you can usually tell them apart by weight as well. Traditionals have a large, heavy iron core transformer inside (and not much else), electronic transformers are much more lightweight for similar power capacity.

Anyway, there are dimmable electronic transformers as well (see here for an example), but I wouldn't try the LC1 with them either as it was designed only for purely resistive loads (an incandescent bulb).

Re: LC1 with halogen lamp

dko7113 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:55:50 GMT

Hi Phil,

I have now looked at the transformer, and not being an expert, I think this is traditional.

It is in a white plastic box, which measure approx 12 x 12 x 12 cm. I believe electronic transformers are the long slim ones...

Regards,

Erik

Re: LC1 with halogen lamp

PhilLondon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:29:04 GMT

Does it work with an electronic tranformer?

Re: LC1 with halogen lamp

dko7113 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:36:44 GMT

From the "Product Browse" section of this site:

"LC1 and LC2 Usage

Halogen lights may be used with LC2 (but not LC1) together with the dimmer function. The dimmer function cannot be used with fluorescent bulbs including energy saving bulbs (which are based on the fluorescent tube principle)."

In my living room I have a LC2 connected to a wire system with 5 12V 20W halogen lights, which I control with my Beo4. It works great - including the dimmer function!

Regards,

Erik

Re: LC1 with halogen lamp

PhilLondon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:02:55 GMT

I have recently tried to connect a LC2 before an electrolic transformer, and I can confirm that it fried my LC2.

I made it work by using another LC2, by deactivating the dimmer function. You need to connect it to another lamp, and do some sort of option settings.

I am not sure this is possible with LC1.

I seems to work now, but at the beginning the lamps used to turn off, or even more weird, turn on by themselves...

Re: LC1 with halogen lamp

tournedos — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:44:03 GMT

I believe the limitation is the inductive load created by the halogen transformer - conventional dimmers (be it an intelligent one like LC1/2 or just one with a knob) can't work with them. If you try, it is possible the LC1 will be damaged even before the fuse has a chance to blow... Electronic halogen transformers won't help here either; they are actually switched mode power supplies and will try to keep the output steady no matter what you feed to the input. 120V halogen bulbs on the other hand will suck a big current surge during cold start, and the LC1 might not like it.

So to keep it short, I'm afraid this simply isn't possible.

LC1 with halogen lamp

leogenghis — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:27 GMT

Hello,

I have a fully-functional, 110V American version of the LC1 and would like to use it with a couple of halogen lamps. I have read that it is "unsuitable" for use / not likely to work with halogen bulbs - what exactly does "unsuitable" mean in this context? Does it mean it would still work but would shorten the lifespan of the bulbs / LC1, and/or create a fire hazard? I'd like to try connecting it to my halogen lamps, but am afraid of something irreversible happening. The halogen bulbs are 12V and 30W, and if it works, I'd like to connect an additional 120W of incandescent lamps to it as well, for a total of 150W of light. The LC1 is rated up to 225W.

Thank you, Leo