my father has this old piece of design abats jours from Ingo Maurer that he loves.

Now the peculiarity of this lamp is that it has no real switch: all you have to do is touch that medal pads at the base with your bare fingers and the light gradually turns up or turns off.

This is done, I believe, thanks to the dedicated transformator, which you can see in this picture I have taken:

now the problem is that this transformator seems to have gone broken or at least malfunctioning, since the light turns on but there's no more graduality nor it turns off.

The problem is, as you can guess, the spare part costs a lot, about 200€ which is too much of course.

So the question is: can I find some cheap alternative? What are we talking about when we are talking touch tronic? is it just a simple marketing name? What kind of transformator / process hide behind this name?

I guess it's very simple, so I am pretty sure there must be something cheap out there..

thanks

 

Would obviously appear to be some capacitive coupling to the body.
A electronic circuit internally takes care of the ramp up/down I would guess.
Do you have it plugged into a earthed outlet?
Does it open up easily to check for any corrosion or foreign matter on the board?
Max.

 

Would obviously appear to be some capacitive coupling to the body.
A electronic circuit internally takes care of the ramp up/down I would guess.
Do you have it plugged into a earthed outlet?
Does it open up easily to check for any corrosion or foreign matter on the board?
Max.

thanks for your reply. We didn't "dare" to open it because we are afraid we could cause a bigger malfunctioning..

the object is somewhat "sealed": it doesnt show any screw or something like that. what do you suggest we do?

 

Not alot you can do without exploring further.
There must be a some kind of cover 'Latch' that some items have now in order to dismantle, or a screw under a label etc.
Max.

 

It will probably use the TT6061 chip, and will have a Transformerless psu, these usually do as they need the "Capacitive Mains pickup " from your body.

Open it up and take pictures of it please...