BARCO 20C... single power supply repeated failures

[Allan Barnes]

Over the past 16 months, I have lost three (3) POWER SUPPLIES in a the same BARCO 20C projector. It's always the Right Hand Side power supply only. .Air Filters are Clean. Power is Clean. EXHAUST FANS RUNNING OK. Other barco projectors series 1 and 2 in the same room are not damaged and operate correctly. QUESTION - HAS ANY ONE ELSE HAD A SIMILAR PROBLEM?

[Steve Guttag]

I had one site that seemed to eat up supplies. According to the logs, it was getting over 240VAC so I suggested putting in a buck transformer to knock it down just a bit. They stopped blowing supplies. Note, it was found that really just the internal fuse was blowing. So, it might be worth your while to see if that is all that is blowing. If so, check your voltage and try to get it between 200-230.

One of the things that was done was to solder on a pair of wires and route them out to a fuse holder so the fuse could be changed rather than the supply.

[Ryan Gallagher]

One of the lighting booths I worked in had issues with a rack and it turned out to be intermittent power issues too.... it was nearly impossible to diagnose until they rented a very nice power quality data logger to get a historical view of what was happening and timestamps.

Fluke has these, I'm sure there are others:
https://www.fluke.com/en-us/products.../power-quality

But as Steve suggested, just what it's showing in the logs might be enough to indicate a power issue.

[Tj Hopland]

I'm not sure how you would test it for sure but could it be that the other 'good' supply isn't contributing its share of the load? Maybe a clamp on current meter on both the line input side and then on the load side to compare them in that machine and others just to get more data on what normal may be? It could be something wrong in the 'good' ones sensing circuit giving bad info to the projector so the other one ends up being being driven too hard? I'm assuming that the projector is getting a reading from each over the data lines then actively adjusting them to keep em in balance.

[Allan Barnes]

Thank you.

[Steve Guttag]

Just in case...when you changed the supply, did you run an update to ensure both supplies were on the same firmware? Whenever any board/power supply, what have you is/are changed, one has to re-run an update, even to the same version to ensure that the new device is properly configured. This is true for most any brand of projector.

[Leo Enticknap]

And IIRC, Series 2 Barcos won't give you an obvious version mismatch warning unless it's serious enough to affect playback - for most version anomalies, you'll just see an asterisk at the top of the version info readout in Communicator. So that's definitely worth checking.

[Allan Barnes]

All my Barco 20c projectors' SOFTWARE were updated to the most latest version (Sept.2025) within the past 21 days. I am not going to swap out and waste another Power Supply until I fix this problem.

[Leo Enticknap]

Strike firmware from the list of suspects, then.

In that case, agreed with Steve and everyone else above that the next thing to investigate is the incoming power supply; especially as this lands straight onto the lamp power supply modules from outside. Apart from a noise filter, it doesn't go through any of the projector's internal electronics. Also agreed that opening up one of the deceased modules and (being careful not to touch the contacts of any of the big capacitors, obviously) checking it out for a blown fuse is worth doing.

[Steve Guttag]

The thing is on the Barco power supplies...both supplies see the exact same thing...the wires are paralleled on both the input AND output. Even the control wires are jumped between the two with only an ID cable to allow the CCB to know which is which.

Note, I don't take, at face value, that both supplies were updated to identical firmware. There was another thread, for DTS, where it was claimed that they were on the "latest firmware" only to find, that wasn't really the case. Until someone actually verifies the firmware version on both supplies, it is just a presumption.

I would definitely check the incoming power and see what the voltage is and how close it is to 240V (if it is that high...old town power that used "High-Leg" can get up there, just like residential). Putting surge suppression on the 208-240 power would be a good move too.

[Marco Giustini]

There was another thread, for DTS, where it was claimed that they were on the "latest firmware" only to find, that wasn't really the case. Until someone actually verifies the firmware version on both supplies, it is just a presumption.

(And we also haven't heard back on that thread despite the extensive support provided and the initial assurance that the firmware was the "latest available" ? )

Could Allan also check the surviving PSU when it's by itself, to see if the projector reports weird things, besides the lack of one unit?

[Abdulaziz Saleh]

I believe it worth to check the power connection that feeds the projector, I had one case where the 3rd party contractor, feeds the projector through the UPS board and there was no UPS in that projector, so whenever power is lost on site the fuses will get damaged

[Hong Sung Hyeok]

If the igniter cable connection is perfect
How about plugging the LPS main connector into the right side and the LPS output cable into the left?
I'm not sure if there's any correlation, but this is one of the troubleshooting steps I do when checking the lamp, LPS, and igniter.

[Christos Gartaganis]

It is possible to check for potential voltage fluctuations on both LPSs via the LPS log file, which is part of the Barco diagnostics package. The mains input voltage is logged each time the LPS is powered on. Also verify the DC output voltage report after turning the lamp on. Under normal operating conditions, the DC output voltage and current readings should be identical on both power supplies