Connecting two light dimmers across one lamp

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pelks

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This is my first post so I hope I do it right!!!!

I built a touch lamp dimmer many years ago. Later I wanted to turn on my lights at radom times, I then installed a triac driven timer, which is commercially made. It all worked fine for about a year but then the timer blew up!! The triac gave up the ghost. I have another timer which was replaced under warranty, but I am afraid to install it, in fear of the same thing happening again.

Does anyone have any idea if its safe to have 2 triacs across each other
operating the same lamp?
 
Since the first one lasted a year, you can expect the new one to do the same. There may be a design flaw that caused it to fail, or you may have a higher wattage lamp than it was designed for.
 
The lamp I am using is only 120w, well below thier rating of 500w.
Whats so dodgy about it John1?
 
I have a touch mode light dimmer (home built) that had a triac blow. Replaced it with a bigger one and it went again after a long time of working perfectly.
Found out that the flood light bulb I used developed a short circuit at the moment it expired of old age and took the triac with it. Both triacs blew while the light came on at full setting (no dimming).

Perhaps fitting a fast blow fuse in series with the triac might help. I fitted an even bigger triac, IMO a much better solution then two triacs in parallel.
 

Bulbs commonly go S/C when they fail (particularly flood lights and spot lights), blowing any triacs feeding them. You can get very special fuses which give a higher degree of protection for the triacs, but they generally cost considerably more than the triacs.

He's not actually asking about connecting triacs in parallel, but about using a dimmer and timer on the same light - he doesn't really say if they are connected in series or parallel. But I agree with others, it doesn't sound like a very good idea in either case.
 
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