R8 fault

[Andy™]

have an R8 installed, its been in use 2 years with no problems until today

keypad made noise (as if in alarm state) and wouldnt do anything (as if the keypad had no power to it). removed cover form panel and external sounded, as expected, since i couldnt get it into engineer mode. all fuses OK. removed mains and battery and re-connected and all back to normal. then about 2 hours later, same thing. remove all power and restore, and works fine?

because its fairly quiet, i didnt notice what triggered it the first time, but second time it was about 5 seconds after i started welding. could have been the same first time.

the welder isnt new, and has been in use for over a year on the same supply as alarm. there is no major drop in voltage or anything when welder is used (nothing dims or anything)

recently moved which included moving the alarm. its on a different circuit and there has been lots of welding done in the last week with no problems, so i dont think its the welder

Any idea's?

 

[Apache]

What kind of welder have you got Andy?

 

[Andy™]

tig

 

[Apache]

tig

fancy! What you making? I quite fancy a little arc welder........

 

[Andy™]

fancy! What you making? I quite fancy a little arc welder........

its just the welder a mate of mine leaves there. for most things, like what i was doing today, id rather use mig. waiting to get 3 phase put in so i can use a stick welder thats lying around since we dont have somewhere to plug it in yet

and how does this help fix my alarm!?

 

[Apache]

its just the welder a mate of mine leaves there. for most things, like what i was doing today, id rather use mig. waiting to get 3 phase put in so i can use a stick welder thats lying around since we dont have somewhere to plug it in yetand how does this help fix my alarm!?

3 phase? Oxford jobbie?

 

[Andy™]

came from closed factory. along with a compressor

 

[Apache]

Have you tried to trigger the fault by welding again? If it happens again you'll know.

 

[Andy™]

still had a bit welding to do after and couldnt get it to happen again

welder has had a fair bit use the last few days and it hasnt happened before today which is why i dont think its the welder, but both times today it was when welder was being used

 

[green-hornet]

I have had a problem with a loose connection on the veritas R8 transformer, but the symptoms where slightly different to yours.

Best way is to test the voltage output which is the first two terminals on the long strip.

Wiggle the wires from the transformer (tech term) and test again for any loose connection. The loose connection if any would be inside the transformer and not on the panel.

I would think it is down to a loose connection somewhere, and not any voltage drop, its battery backup so should work whatever the tempory voltage was.

 

[Andy™]

i checked all connections when it was installed the other day but ill go over everything (with multimeter this time) tomorrow. the battery is good, so if it did loose mains, i dont see why it would stop RKP working. and still had a 12V hold off signal to external bellbox

 

[green-hornet]

Check the RKP connector strip at the rear of the keypad it may be loose or not making good enough contact.

The ribbon type bit thingy

 

[Andy™]

ill go through everything tomorrow... hopefully it wont have went into alarm since i left...

i know the ribbon part you mean - never though to check that part

 

[oliver1234]

ill go through everything tomorrow... hopefully it wont have went into alarm since i left...i know the ribbon part you mean - never though to check that part

It is almost certainly the welder Andy. Any kind of electric welding, arc, tig, mig etc produces load of radio frequency interference and a lot of this will find it's way onto the supply.

A lot of modern panels (R8 included) are made of polycarb which offers no screening.

You might find that fitting a filtered fused connection unit in place of the existing spur will help and also ACT make all sorts of filters to help prevent this kind of thing.

Don't think that every time you weld it will happen, these problems are raely consistent and often hard to reproduce.

 

[Andy™]

i just think its strange how its managed without any problems with welders for over 2 years (used to be a mig used daily for a few month, then a tig for over a year) until today and get it twice within an hour

 

[oliver1234]

i just think its strange how its managed without any problems with welders for over 2 years (used to be a mig used daily for a few month, then a tig for over a year) until today and get it twice within an hour

Must admit that does seem strange, is it possible that the welder isn't earthed very well or perhaps soemthing else has changed?

Obviously it's hard to say with any certainty but the symptoms (panel crashing and only restoring after power down) does sound like a corrupt processsor and thsi is often cause by EMI/RFI, often happens during thunder storms.

I used to service alrms full time for various national companies and once got called to a house where the alarm was activating spriously when turned off, when I got there there was a police officer outside with a handheld radar, everytime he pinged a motorist the alarm activated!

 

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

Must admit that does seem strange, is it possible that the welder isn't earthed very well or perhaps soemthing else has changed?Obviously it's hard to say with any certainty but the symptoms (panel crashing and only restoring after power down) does sound like a corrupt processsor and thsi is often cause by EMI/RFI, often happens during thunder storms.

I used to service alrms full time for various national companies and once got called to a house where the alarm was activating spriously when turned off, when I got there there was a police officer outside with a handheld radar, everytime he pinged a motorist the alarm activated!

Many many years ago, one of my earlier jobs we supply and maintained computerised electronic clocking in machines..

e.g. microprocessor.. shift rules programmed in

employees clock in & out & it works out their attendance hours for the payroll dept..

This one job just kept going AWOL at random times for no apparent reason

eventually we found out the other side of the wall to where the clock was installed the were doing metal fabrications and welding!

when ever they brought the Welder within certain distance to the wall

ZAP clock went doo-lally!

could be something only relative to certain position of the welder maybe?

A loose connection causing problems would generally tend to need some sort of vibration to set it off...

is the alarm on a stud wall susceptible to vibration ?

:| ?:|

 

[Andy™]

the welder has been used closer to alarm that it normally was. it used to be 4-5mtr from panel and other side of a wall to RKP, its main use this week has been in same room as panel, and when both faults occured, about 1.5mtr from RKP. but the radio was sitting less than 30cm from welder and that never had any problem