I will be doing a temp hook up of some LED panels for testing purposes (previously Halogen) if I keep the dimmer light switch on full power will that be ok to use in the short term or do I have to change the light switch to a normal one, which I would prefer to do later on.
You`ll possibly upset the drivers, a dimmer at 100% is still a chopped waveform, use a swiitch to start with.
It depends, it's a gamble
ok thanks.
Adding to that though as I will be swapping back and forth (halogen v LED) will the reverse also be true ie if I use a normal light switch I assume this would then affect the halogens?
I have 5 halogens and I want to take 2 out and replace with LEDs and adjust positioning and colour temp until I am happy with it, in between I will put the halogens back in place hence the questions. When sorted I will replace all the halogens with 3 x LED panels.
The halogens will be fine with a normal switch. Halogens just heat a wire up till it glows white-hot. They don't give a flying **** about the wave-form, and will have been designed to run just fine on full-fat mains.
The very slight 'insertion loss' of a dimmer, even if on full all the time, does tend to make them last longer.
I did try an LED in a table lamp fed from a ordinary and old 'grid switch' dimmer. Smallest dimmer they made - probably 250 watt. The LED seemed to work ok but stayed at full brightness regardless of the dimmer setting, until approaching minimum, when it went out. Could well be a modern dimmer may not like the too small load.
Well yes, but on the other hand the OP was asking about using an ordinary switch for testing purposes. (And even for full time use, they only last longer because they are dimmer.)
Not surprised. The power supply in a LED can probably run the LED flat out with hardly any of the wave-form getting through.
I would have expected a *modern* dimmer to cope better with too little load. (An old fashioned dimmer was very unlikely to encounter a load less than 60W - 40W at a stretch.)
The conventional triac (leading-edge) light dimmer has not changed in
30 odd years. Trailing-edge domestic dimmers are certainly more modern, but have yet to make much progress in displacing their conventional counterparts on the shelves.
I displaced my old style dimmer fromm the wall with a new training edge dimmer and I could get a wide range of brighteness which I could with teh old standard dimmer, I dont; think it's the power but the way the timmer works.
I wasn't suggesting otherwise.
I was simply saying the "ordinary" dimmer you buy now is much the same as the one you got in Woolworths 30 years ago.
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