3Dsigns
New Member
A few years ago, I bought a sign cabinet from a wholesale company in Alabama. It was 72x49, with a horizontal divider/retainer. Above the divider was panformed faces and below were EMC units. The sign was two sided. About 2 weeks or so after I installed it, got a call from the customer, said one of the EMC had stopped working. I opened it up, checked it out and there were droplets of water covering the inside of the cabinet and the EMC was fried. I called the sign manufacturerer, sent them photos of the water and they wanted to know if I had left the cabinet open to the weather. I told them that I definitely had not. Well, they gave me the runaround for several days, would not cover it under warranty, blamed it on the EMC manufacturerer, so I had to go directly to them. We finally received an new circuit board. I opened up the sign, replaced the board and it started working again. .
Next a DC power supply burned out(there were two), so I just replaced them both. But it finally dawned on me; this was in the late fall; I figured what was happening was, the air in the cabinet was heating up to 100 degrees or so during the day but when the sun went down, the temp quickly dropped causing condensation. I don't remember seeing any more water droplets since that first time but I had probably caught it at the right time of the day and they were probably dried up by the time I arrived to service the sign on subsequent times. But the cabinet had no ventilation and so the moisture in the air inside the cabinet was condensing, hence the large droplets looking like it had rained inside. I told the manufacturer about this and they brushed it off like I didn't know anything about anything. Next, both EMC's died and this went on a few more weeks as I kept bugging them and they kept giving me the runaround. They finally sent the general manager of the company down, with a new cabinet and this time it had ventilation ports. This has been years ago and I have gotten no more calls from the customer. In summary, they had blamed it on the EMC manufacturer when it was really their fault for not ventilating the cabinet. Has anyone else had an experiance like this?
Next a DC power supply burned out(there were two), so I just replaced them both. But it finally dawned on me; this was in the late fall; I figured what was happening was, the air in the cabinet was heating up to 100 degrees or so during the day but when the sun went down, the temp quickly dropped causing condensation. I don't remember seeing any more water droplets since that first time but I had probably caught it at the right time of the day and they were probably dried up by the time I arrived to service the sign on subsequent times. But the cabinet had no ventilation and so the moisture in the air inside the cabinet was condensing, hence the large droplets looking like it had rained inside. I told the manufacturer about this and they brushed it off like I didn't know anything about anything. Next, both EMC's died and this went on a few more weeks as I kept bugging them and they kept giving me the runaround. They finally sent the general manager of the company down, with a new cabinet and this time it had ventilation ports. This has been years ago and I have gotten no more calls from the customer. In summary, they had blamed it on the EMC manufacturer when it was really their fault for not ventilating the cabinet. Has anyone else had an experiance like this?
