Favero Reels

[Fencergrl]

One of my reels is acting up. Before shipping this heavy thing off to be repaired, I thought I would take a stab at picking a few brains here.

On the Bench:
When my husband tests the reel on his VOM, everything shows continuity. When we pull the cord, out of the reel while testing for continuity everything still looks good. All the connections visually look good.

On the Strip:

I'm going from memory (as I haven't been using this reel)
The yellow light goes off in sabre.
I think in epee the bellguard goes off.

1) If this makes sense... what should we do to fix it? Or should I ship it off to be repaired?
2) If this doesn't make sense, I can use it and report back here what symptoms it's showing.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Purple Fencer]

How tightly are the body cordsfitting into the reel? They could be loose....or it could be the floor cords, since it sounds like the reel itself is OK.

Possible that both the body cords were bad, but if they were two different people, that drops the chances.

Keep in mind that I haven'd done that much work on the Faveros...mostly resoldering connections and one time when the cable jumped the reel. Someone with more experience on them might have a better answer.

[Fencergrl]

I'll have someone with a new cord try it and I'll use my best floor cords... unless someone else has some words of wisdom before my classes tomorrow.

[jjefferies]

Before shipping the heavy thing off I'd double check all the usual stupid little things that often are the fault:
1. The connector at the fencer's end. Put a good body cord on it and connect the VOM to that then walk it across the floor to see if you can reproduce the problem.
2. Then if you have a spare, change out the floor cord. Amazing how often a floor cord that just sits there can back off screws. Your description made it sound like the "C" was intermittent.
3. tighten all the screws that hold the wires in the connector paying particular attention to the "C" line. Back it out a bit and reset it.
4. And oh yes you can always spend some time spreading the leaves of the male connector so they make better contact when inserted in the female end.


Best of luck with it.
J.

[SJCFU#2]

One other bench test you might consider having your husband perform:

Connect one socket of the reel to a Favero tester (or some other one which detects microbreaks - they generally pick up small break better then a multimeter). Make sure that you are using a good, solid body cord. Then short the jacks at the other end together using a jumper (a short length of wire with a banana plug at each end). This should cause either the red or green LED on the tester to light up (or both if you short all three jacks together). Pull the cable back and forth, watching the tester the whole time. The red and green LED's should remain lit at all times and the yellow LED's should NOT come on. If you see a yellow LED come on then there is a break somewhere - possibly a loose connection (although this would be rare for a Favero, since most of the connections are soldered). However if no yellow lights come on then the problem probably is somewhere else.

I concur with jjeffries - from the symptoms you've described it sounds like the problem is somewhere in the C line.

[oiuyt]

Let me guess, on the strip the reel is being used with an SG-11?

The "yellow" lights are actually the white light. SG-11's use a row of yellow LEDs to indicate a white light in sabre (as opposed to the bank of yellow LEDs the machine uses to indicate a white light in foil), which is different than the row of yellow LEDs the same machine uses to indicate a yellow light. All rows being contained within the same panel, naturally.

If that's the case then the sabre symptom indicates a break in the B-C circuit and the epee symptom indicates a break in the opponentA-C circuit. The common line is your C line.

If the yellow light in the sabre symptom is actually the yellow light, it indicates a short between the A and C lines. It's hard to come up with a solution that would cause both that and the epee symptom without also causing other, more obvious symptoms (such as not being able to score touches in any weapon or constant white lights in foil).

-B

[Fencergrl]

Let me guess, on the strip the reel is being used with an SG-11?

Nope, Favero score set.

I'm going by memory on the symptoms as I a pulled the reel out of use sometime ago as it became "that reel".... you know the one that always seemed flaky no matter what weapon or who hooked up to it.

Since I decided it was "broken". I stopped using it. Upon spotting my husband in a generous mood for fixing my gear, I optimistically tossed this on the pile (thus putting him in a bad mood). Since I have already decide my reel was "broken" and my husband disagreed... I was hoping to be able to go back armed with a places he can look.

Bahhh... you have all failed me. According to my logic:
1) I am a woman, therefore I cannot be wrong.
2) My reel is broken because I think it acts funny.
3) My husband can't find the problem so his methods of looking are flawed.
4) F-net is flawed because everyone wants me to look elsewhere or do the work. If this was correct then #1 is wrong... and THAT isn't possible!!!

Seriously, thanks for all your help. I will smile sweetly at my husband and ask him to reassemble my reel. I will test it as you have all indicated.

If I still can't find out what's going on and it still acts funny... I will bury this reel in my backyard and never speak of it again.

[oiuyt]

Nope, Favero score set.

Darn. So much for that guess.

So by yellow lights do you, actually, mean the two-LED element between the colored and "white" displays, or are you referring to the "white" lights which are made up of 20 yellow LEDs.*

As indicated in my previous post, the cause of those two symptoms is very different.

-B

* Assuming a Favero Full-Arm-01.

[telkanuru]

It almost sounds to me like someone crossed or shorted the A-C lines either in the reel or in the floor cord.

(Yellow light in saber means B/C line is in contact with the A, no grounding in epee means the C line is defective)

[oiuyt]

It almost sounds to me like someone crossed or shorted the A-C lines either in the reel or in the floor cord.

(Yellow light in saber means B/C line is in contact with the A, no grounding in epee means the C line is defective)

Right, but flipping the A and C lines means:
* Epees don't work (unless there's also a short between the A-line wire and the bell/blade somewhere)
* Foils cause a constant white light.
* Sabres can't score, except by corps-a-corps.

Shorting them would give the sabre symptom, but not the epee symptom.

-B

[Fencergrl]

So by yellow lights do you, actually, mean the two-LED element between the colored and "white" displays, or are you referring to the "white" lights which are made up of 20 yellow LEDs.*

Without pulling out my scoring machine... by yellow light I mean, the light that goes off when you unplug from the reel when it is set for sabre. It would flicker, fencers would check their cords. When I switched out the reels, the symptom stopped (even though everything else remained the same). This is how the reel became declared as "broken".

From this conversation, I'm realizing it may not be the female ends on the reel, because it didn't happen with all body cords, just enough that it became annoying.

[telkanuru]

Right, but she only *thinks* the epee doesn't ground.

EDIT- So by yellow you mean white?

[Fencergrl]

I'm sure about the sabre symptom. I'm not sure about my memory of the epee issue. For a long time I used this reel in my epee classes with no problems. Being suspicious of an issue with the reel, I pulled it from epee use the first time it looked like there was a problem. It might have been body cord, floor cord or reel.

[Fencergrl]

EDIT- So by yellow you mean white?

On the sabre setting... one side, there is a red light and a yellow light (large big square lights) on the other is a green light and a yellow light. I am talking about those big yellow squares that light up when you unplug.

[oiuyt]

On the sabre setting... one side, there is a red light and a yellow light (large big square lights) on the other is a green light and a yellow light. I am talking about those big yellow squares that light up when you unplug.

Right, those are the "white" lights in Telk's discussion.

The yellow lights are the much smaller (2 LED) sets that are between the red/green square and the "white" square made up of yellow LEDs. Given that there IS a yellow light used to indicate equipment faults, referring to the "white" light as yellow, understandable as it might be due to the actual color, is misleading. And highlights one of the problems with remote diagnosis and the limitations of text as a medium, especially without standardized terminology.

In this case what you're seeing is an indication that the B-C circuit is broken. As previously discussed, in combination with the epee symptom this indicates that one ought ot look at the C line.

Of course it's also VERY possible that what you're seeing is one or more faults in the fencers' equipment. Given the negative tests performed by your husband this is the most likely cause. Heck, in the absence of any testing information about the reel it would be the most likely cause. When in doubt blame the body cord(s).

-B