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Touch lamp dimmers

NickD on Fri September 29, 2006 1:51 PM User is offline

Neat, wife and I were at a local furniture store, had stainless steel night stand lamps at 80% off, couldn't pass that up and she liked them. But came with three way switches using those overpriced three way lamps with the two filaments on the inside.

Found touch lamp dimmers, actually two types, one with a remote touch pad and a long plug in type line cord, the other was a built in replacement unit, price was the same, but got the latter and very simple to install in the base of the lamp using the entire metal lamp as the touch pad.

Really neat, touch anywhere on the lamp, has four steps, off, low, medium, and full brightness and switches rapidly as quick as you can tap a finger on it.

And you don't have to fool around looking for the switch.

Tennessee_Timmy on Sat September 30, 2006 3:38 PM User is offlineView users profile

you found the little "potted" box with the 3 wires coming out of it? where? after a storm took out the little boxes, I've got 2 lamps that have on-off control of unscrewing the bulb. been too lazy to look, but getting tired of burnt fingers

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Good Luck 2 ya,
Timmy

NickD on Sat September 30, 2006 7:44 PM User is offline

Found a Westek E72217-B at a local Mills Fleet Farm store, these came in a rather large plastic snap together case 2 x 1 7/8 X 5/8" that I couldn't find a spot for. Lamp bases had large cast iron weights. Just a small PCB inside, had to lay down a radial lead capacitor, used 3,000 V electrical tape, a couple of layers and was able to jam that in.

Has four wires, a common that I spliced into the wide blade lead, AC in to the narrow blade, AC out to the lamp socket, and the touch wire that I soldered to the case of the all metal lamp.

Typically the Triac shorts out with a surge, ha, replaced many of those in conventional light dimmer circuits, the Westek had a rather small Triac, can only handle up to a 150 W bulb, would be easy to replace on the PCB, but if yours is a molded assembly, probably not worth the work of scrapping it clean.

Tennessee_Timmy on Fri November 24, 2006 6:05 PM User is offlineView users profile

oops, sorry for the duplicate post, been so long, I've forgotten how.

anyway, hey Nick, since we chatted I finally got serious about replacing the little controller (after the wife burned the fingers on a hot 60W bulb once too often). how lazy was I, all I had to do was search a little bit. heck even Ace hardware has them for $10.99. Also found them at auction for 7.25 free shipping. even if they are a piece of junk, if they'll last me until the wife's fingers callus over, I'll be doing all right.

Noting the other post, hope all here had a happy Thanksgiving, and were lucky enough to have someone to share it with.


-------------------------
Good Luck 2 ya,
Timmy

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