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Chris Lewis wrote:
According to Goedjn :
Nope, on second thought, I agree with Mr. Wisnia.

I'd just keyed on device failure in two separate
places, and that triggered the "check the supplied
power" reflex. In retrospect, dimmer switches
are the sheep of electrical components, (they
spend their short, miserable lives looking for
a way to die) so it's not unlikely that
it was the death of the light that killed the dimmer,
not the same thing killing both directly.

What it sounds like to me is that there's something
wrong inside the fixture - eg: a bare spot on a
wire, and when the fixture begins to heat up, thermal
flexing is causing it to dead short. It's a little
odd that it seems to repeatedly damaging the wire
at the box, rather than something else, but dead shorts
will certainly kill dimmers.

This is a chain-supported lamp? Check over the wire
down the chain _very carefully_ - check for chafing
and other scorch marks. Inspect all of the wiring
inside the fixture you can get at.
--
Chris Lewis,

Age and Treachery will Triumph over Youth and Skill
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.

Hi Chris. Yes, it is a chain supported lamp. I replaced the wire and
the socket. I went to Home Depot and they still sell the same fixture.
According to the specs on the box, the fixture is rated up to 100
watts. That is what I originally put in when I installed the fixture.
Everything was fine for 2 years before this problem surfaced. No
changes were made to the circuits feeding it. Would putting some shrink
tubing in the place where it usually burns out help insulate it enough
if the root cause is an external thermal issue? I am really baffled at
this point.
Thanks, Harry


Unless the shrink tubing avoids a short from happening, it is not going
to help solve this problem. If a wire burns out anywhere but at the
connector end, the problem is probably related to too much current flow.

You could put an ammeter in series with the lamp and see whether
it is drawing more than it should.

Bob