DS-125 Does not Fire

Hi,

I'm having an issue with one of my two DS-125s. I ordinarily use 2 x DS125s, with dual sync chord and an Ikelite 350D housing. I shoot mainly in manual for wide angle and TTL for macro.

On a recent PNG trip, both strobes worked perfectly on the first dive, however on the second one of the strobes started firing by itself at random 10-20 second random intervals. After a short while 1-2 minutes, it stopped firing but the other kept working fine. The other strobe and dual head syn chord (with slave end plugged up) seemed to work fine for the rest of the trip (20 dives).

After this dive the possessed strobe simply would not fire. Turning the dial to Test indicates that the battery is fine with 3 LEDs (I tried another just in case). The internal modelling light also works. Unfortunately the ready light never lights upand it will no longer fire.

To my knowledge there is no evidence of a flood of any kind into the strobe (battery section or sync chord bulkhead). All the gear used is approx 8 months old and up until this fatal dive world perfectly.

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know, otherwise I will have to send it away I guess.

Kind Regards,

Damien Siviero

Hi Damien,

Sorry to hear you are having difficulty.

You may have already tried this, but I would suggest connecting the faulty strobe to both sync cord connectors to test that the fault isn't with the one half of the dual cord.

If this doesn't work, you could also try another sync cord if you have one or can borrow one.

I'm not really confident that this will work however, since your ready light never illuminates. It sounds like you might need to send the strobes back to Ike. I would email Ike and see if he has any other suggestions.

Does the ready light turns on with the strobe disconnected? Have you tried this test:

http://www.ikelite.com/faq/faq_syncwiring.html

If everything else fails send it directly to Ikelite and I am sure they will repair it under warranty.

It does sound like the sort of trickery caused by a bit of salt water. Either that or a loose connection. My guess would be a drop of salt water has got in. Maybe not underwater - but on the boat or something when you were assembling the camera.

Anyway I think it needs some Ikelite TLC.

Alex

Thanks for the prompt replies. I carry a spare sync chord but that did not help since it seems the strobe itself is the issue. I just tried the pin connector test as Rocha suggested and it doesn't fire. The ready light never comes on either.

As I'm in Australia I'll see what the distributer here can do, otherwise back to Ike it will have to go.

I would really like to know if water was the cause of the fault, because if so then I can only presume it was water or humidity damage to the TTL board. I'd suspect this first because I did not change the batteries nor disconnect synchord (at either strobe or housing) between the dive when it all worked and the dive when it went crazy. If this was the case then I can only presume it was humidity, because water can't easily get into the TTL board inside the housing and I dried everything before opening the housing.

I wonder if I should have the TTL board cheack out too, in case it was the fault and caused the strobe to go bang?

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Damien Siviero

Damien,

You may be lucky, but my experience with CBI is that they don't do any repairs themselves. They just ship back to Ikelite. To save adding another link to the chain, it might be quicker just to ship directly to Ike so that you get it back quicker. You could talk to CBI and ask if they will repair on site. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

Good luck and keep us posted on the outcome.

thanks Anthony. I would have thought as much from CBI, but I actually bought it through Innovations who operate DigitalDiver.net.au. I now they service housing but am not sure about strobes.

thanks. ds

Damien,

Your best bet is to send the strobe directly to us. I do not think Innovations does any strobe repair. Include with the strobe a short letter describing your problem.