Flood Damaged SNOW MACHINE - Can I Repair it? 

Definitely captures the quiet, peaceful atmosphere of snow coming down while you lay on the couch with someone vacuuming beside you.

Great video, Vince. Very cool! There's snow way I thought you'd get that pumping again! 👍☃

A theatrical snow machine of this type will often have two methods of activation and flow control. One is by a hard-wired remote control unit which you plug into the device, the other is via DMX 512 digital show control protocol which was originally designed to connect lighting control boards to dimmers, and was then extended to directly control moving lights, hazers and smoke machines as well. The DIP switches on the back of this SW-2 unit are used to assign a unique DMX address to this device. There are two 5-pin DIN sockets just below the DIP switches labeled DMX IN and DMX OUT which is where you plug the DMX IN/OUT control cables to daisy-chain this unit into a DMX loop that can cater for up to 512 unique device addresses. I would deduce that the water damage wrecked the micro-controller/oscillator which was handling the DMX 512 control - and when you you disconnected the damaged micro-controller, the machine lapsed back to running under the hard-wired manual remote control - and started producing snow again.

Great video! A little advice: You should unwind the mains expansion cable when using high powered devices, as it acts as a giant inductor. Especially when a metal cable drum is used (old model not a problem wit yours it seems), the spool also gets a core and turns it into a more powerful electric magnet. As a result you are not only wasting energy, but also the entire spool gets hot. Especially on the parts with the most resistance plastic start melting over time. Usually this is the mains connectors (connectors in general have a higher resistance than pure wire) on the side start getting hot and fail. Not a problem for a short test, but when using a cable drum more than just a few minutes, keep that in mind.

I loved the long sleeve of electrical safety.

Wow! This was a blizzard of faults, and you plowed through them all! Fantastic vid.

I used to own and run a large mobile disco. I had several of these machines linked by DMX and boosted by powerful external fans. I was able to create quite a blizzard. Always came out at Christmas, for the big parties. Apart from being brilliant fun, it also gave you a good shampoo LOL. 😂

Well done Vice the DIP switches are for DMX control the switches set the DMX chanel,

Well done! That "fan" motor looks like the same one that is used in vacuum cleaners and also sounds the same like the one in a vacuum cleaner. The switches on the back are for selecting dmx channels for dmx control. Also the crystal being corroded can cause that nuvoton microcontroller to not work or crash. Microcontrollers and other digital chips often need a crystall to work, the crystal is basicly the heartbeat of the chip without it the chip performs no instructions at all that was why the pump was not activated because the outputs of the chip where low or high it WAS the crystall at fault. Also had to repair a water damaged dmx light that did not turn on and the motor was stuck and it was also a faulty crystall. Great repair! Nice that this water damaged device could be repaired.

I love the variety of videos you make. It keeps things fresh and new along with the constant learning of new things!

The little filter is a "sintered" air filter , used mainly with compressed air to remove particles and keep the air clean for lab environments or for machinery that doesn't like bits in it.

Well done for sticking with it Vince, good job, another one saved!

What a great fix! And you let it snow.. I'm imagine your neighbour when you screamed "it snows!" And he was like.. huh?!😂

I found myself cheering for you in this video and smiling when the snow came out! Instant subscribe. Brilliant work.

Well done Vince you really put your time into the machine, very methodical in your fault finding…. I really enjoyed the video thanks 😊

Love that giddy laugh @

A lot of work for a device that has hardly any practical uses but very entertaining. Your forensic skills at tracing faults would probably make you a great brain surgeon!

The triac, controlled by the microcontroller via the transistors and optocoupler basically does the same as in an incandescent light dimmer. That's why the machine created quite a big splash on your wall when the triac was bypassed. Also, this pump was much louder on max power with bypassed triac. I think, older versions of this machine would only have a classic triac dimmer circuit with a potmeter on the back, for adjusting the pump. In this one, there was the microcontroller, so it could also be controlled with DMX control signals from a lighting console.

Hi vince that filter inside the blower motor enclosure is actually an atomiser that's used in diesel things like diesel heaters. I've never seen it used like this

This is sooo unorthodox yet I looove it sooo much haha.