Anonymous Contributor E-Match

[displayfireworks1]

I know the contributor however he wishes to remain anonymous. He follows the pyrotalk forums and will occasionally send me something to post on his behalf. Here it is , comments welcome.
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Dave,

I saw some comments in the forum regarding that some people had issues with the consumer MJG initiators not igniting their products. I recently did a show that uses the consumer initiators and had a few items that did not get shot with their firing system (a couple of modules may have gotten wet from rain the day before), we cut the initiators off the shells so they could be transported back to the magazine. So I took a photo of the consumer and professional MJG initiators along with a Chinese initiator to compare the amount of the pyrogen on each of them. The consumer initiator has the least amount of composition compared to the professional initiator and the Chinese initiator has the most composition. We did not have any issues with the consumer initiators in the show, and we used at least 2000 of them, it was a very large show. I do need to mention that I did series wire three initiators and saw some inconsistencies in the total resistance in one of the circuits: one had a total resistance of 1.6 ohms and all the others were 4.5 ohms. I suspect that there might have been two initiators in that circuit that were partially shorted causing the low resistance. But they did light the product they were wired to. Note that two of the initiator's wires were trimmed to 4-5 inches and one was full length of 15 feet.

Yes I do check the resistance of any circuit that I do series wiring to make sure the circuit is good.

Feel free to post this if you wish, XXXXX XXXXX XXX


Regards,
XXXX XXXXX
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[BMoore]

MJG initiators do produce less spark but if installed correctly they are plenty sufficient. Although I’m licensed I have been using MJG initiators with no issues…..until this year. Actually all the initiators I used worked fine, but I happened to notice two that the head had completely fallen off. I then inspected the rest and found more where the pyrogen was noticeably flaking away. This problem, if widespread, could easily account for the weak spark issue some people are reporting.

[Engineer Cat]

The company I been crewing for is using them as well and when we have some failed shots the lead shooter always feels it was something with the MJG because he swears he did not have that many failures when using Ematch before they started using the initiators.

[Salutecake]

Well from what I hear MJG has been playing catchup with their product so who knows what could be happening to the product in production, inspections and so on -- I too experienced more failures this year compared to passed events using MJG. To me Ematch has always been been better than initiators but the for the sake of storage complications, MJG wins out.

[Smily0]

I've used MJG for a few years personally and the pro company I worked with uses them as well. I've never had a failure to ignite when the MJG was in the lift charge in past years and the company has had good luck too. We did have a couple of igniters that had no continuity out of the box. I don't know of any failures with the pro stuff, but I had two 1.4 shells that didn't ignite. I had the MJG shroud in the lift charge, and can see that it went off (inside the shroud was black) but they didn't ignite the powder. I know that looking at the igniters as I went the composition amounts seemed to vary. Not a big deal to me since it was shells, but would have been more of an issue on a cake.

[displayfireworks1]

I've used MJG for a few years personally and the pro company I worked with uses them as well. I've never had a failure to ignite when the MJG was in the lift charge in past years and the company has had good luck too. We did have a couple of igniters that had no continuity out of the box. I don't know of any failures with the pro stuff, but I had two 1.4 shells that didn't ignite. I had the MJG shroud in the lift charge, and can see that it went off (inside the shroud was black) but they didn't ignite the powder. I know that looking at the igniters as I went the composition amounts seemed to vary. Not a big deal to me since it was shells, but would have been more of an issue on a cake.

When you say "No Continuity out of the box" Did the company you worked for test the email before it made it to the field? If so I am curious how they did that.

[Smily0]

When you say "No Continuity out of the box" Did the company you worked for test the email before it made it to the field? If so I am curious how they did that.

I guess that wording could be confusing. The igniters were inserted into the black match and then a continuity check was run and they did not pass. Sorry, I should have said it different. One of my personal igniters had a wire loose in the quickplug connector. While I don't think I caused the damage, I can't rule it out. All in all, I'm still happy with the MJG products.

[displayfireworks1]

Thanks for clarifying.
Connection errors are common. In addition once a display starts firing shells into the air taking match up with it in addition to vibration etc created in the racks etc. on an electrical display For me a certain percentage of errors are expected. Now add in the experience level of the people that set the display up and other factors ,, the odds of 100% success are limited.

[markcockrell]

For me a certain percentage of errors are expected.

What would you consider an "acceptable failure rate? What sort of contingencies can you build in to prevent black sky when something does fail?

[topshelfpyro]

What would you consider an "acceptable failure rate? What sort of contingencies can you build in to prevent black sky when something does fail?

As a percentage of total cues it should be very very low. My display last year I had 3 not go out of over 850. With that being said, I know of someone this year that had a 20% failure rate during a big show and that's devastating to a pyromusical.

If your just shooting cue to cue like step firing, you would simply hit the next cue and move on. For a scripted show you can have separate "just in case" filler you could manually fire. For a pyromusical not much can be done. If you do a continuity check before hand and it all checks good then the expectation is that it all fires.

[displayfireworks1]

I know back in the original FireOne days before two wire with those I believe they are called Centronic connections, errors were common . Sometimes a entire row of racks would not go. Those Centronic side clips were sometimes missing or never had the repeated connection strength for multiple use. We used to clip them (if both clips were present) and then belt tie them for a tighter connection against vibration. Those connections were never built to high industrial outdoor standards. The real problem with error now on hobbyist displays are Consumer products (Except most of my DF1 product) are not built to electrically fire. You actually have to defeat the safety fusing to use electric match. Now add in who is all helping to fuse and their experience levels. Additional other factors like those years China was using that junky ass perchlorate fuse . Errors can go as high as 10 %. Referencing back to those early FireOne days prior to two wire and even with most hobbyist displays that have errors. I do think the audience ever notices the difference.
One most recent error that comes to mind locally here where I live in Pittsburgh. The audience noticed this one. July 4th Pittsburgh is always a multi barge display in the rivers where the 3 rivers meet . the company that year had at least one un-maned barge was the word. They were controlling it from the bank of the river. Guess what , something went wrong and no one was on that barge to correct it. They were large dead spots in the display. When I was working those shows , you got your ass on the barge in that little duck blind with the FireOne for the entire display. I personally loved every minute of it being on the barge in the middle of the show going off , following it on the computer out in the river. LOL I would have been disappointed if they told me to stay on the bank of the river.