3x Martin Atomic - how much power?

Freshers' Week at uni & I'm lighting Wednesday night's dance, got 3x Atomics at my disposal which I want to use but finding it hard to work out whether it's safe to use them all on high power without risking tripping the 63A breaker on the lighting distro, considering they'll be sharing it with other lights too (including a pair of 1.2kW scanners & umpteen 250-300W moving heads).

Martin website says maximum peak of 33A, typical maximum of 8A, the fuse is 20A slow blow & the plugs are 16A ceeform. So what the hell are they actually going to draw?! I want to hammer them pretty hard, but probably won't be using them as blinders much if at all.

allow 16A per unit and you should be ok, give it a test just to make sure!

I've always run them on their own 16A breakers before & never managed to trip one, even when using the blinder feature. My concern is how many *other* lights I can run off the same distro without risking tripping the main 63A breaker. If I assume they might use all 16A, that'll only leave 15A which won't do the 15x or more 300W moving heads & 2x 1.2kW scanners I want to use. Suppose I can always move one of the Atomics to the auxiliary ceeform output on our dimmers which are on a different breaker.

^^ What he said, and there is a big difference between the draw of a full blind and fast strobing.

whitehousejamie wrote: They have a "half power" mode which you could always switch to should you have issues.

Well I've never had a problem with them on high power mode when they each have their own 16A breaker, even blinding, but I don't know off-hand what curve these breakers are. It's an old Rubber Box Company 63A single phase to 18x 16A ceeform, so they're probably.... C curve? Dunno, will obviously find out in Wednesday.

Edited by lost eden - 10 September 2012 at 1:54pm