To LUGNET HomepageTo LUGNET News HomepageTo LUGNET Guide Homepage
 Help on Searching
 
Post new message to lugnet.trainsOpen lugnet.trains in your NNTP NewsreaderTo LUGNET News Traffic PageSign In (Members)
 Trains / 26969
26968  |  26970
Subject: 
Re: Train Motor dilema
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.trains
Date: 
Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:06:19 GMT
Viewed: 
2207 times
  
In lugnet.trains, Ted Michon wrote:
  
   In lugnet.trains, Anthony Sava wrote: ...

Anthony-

I’ve reported on this same subject before. The fundamental problem, viewed from the top level, is that LEGO train motor assemblies are not reliable and behavior can deteriorate rapidly and randomly according to usage, load, and luck.

The good news, from characterizing and disassembling many LEGO train motor assemblies, is that the problem is almost never the motor itself. The problems come from bad electrical connections from broken/worn/bent wheel pickups and from failure of the thermal protection disk. Since we do a lot of DCC, we automatically remove the thermal disks when we take motor assemblies apart to wire in the encoders. That leaves only problems with bad motors, and we have only ever found 1 actually bad performer (dead, actually, until we pushed in the shaft, and then intermittent). Believe it or not, I have better success converting seemingly dead motor assemblies to DCC than brand new ones out of the box!

(And, in any event, you can just send your bad performers back to TLC for replacement at no charge.)

-Ted

Forgive my ignorance, what is DCC?

I do plan on sending in my bad motor. I went back to my Santa Fe rolling stock and found all of my observation car-style cars have horrible friction damage to the upside down studs between the wheels, as has been reported by other people.

The damage on some of the studs is so bad that 1/4 of the plastic is missing off one side of the stud. No wonder the motor died.

I’ve replaced all of those plates with tiles, so hopefully I won’t have to worry about that problem anymore.

--Anthony



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Train Motor dilema
 
(...) Anthony- DCC = Digital Command and Control, an electrical signalling protocol used by many model railroading hobbyists to provide remote control of 1000s of trains at the same time on the same layout using essentially simpl parallel wiring. (...) (19 years ago, 11-Mar-06, to lugnet.trains, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Train Motor dilema
 
(...) Anthony- I've reported on this same subject before. The fundamental problem, viewed from the top level, is that LEGO train motor assemblies are not reliable and behavior can deteriorate rapidly and randomly according to usage, load, and luck. (...) (19 years ago, 9-Mar-06, to lugnet.trains, FTX)

5 Messages in This Thread:


Entire Thread on One Page:
Nested:  All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:  All | Brief | Compact

This Message and its Replies on One Page:
Nested:  All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:  All | Brief | Compact
    

Custom Search

©2005 LUGNET. All rights reserved. - hosted by steinbruch.info GbR