Thursday, February 04, 2010

More on the point motor strategy

I have received my fulgurex point motor and had a good look at it.  P1080517

The current draw from one of these is about 200mA, way less than the DCC30 accessory decoder rating of 3A (I have asked gaugemaster again about this given their belief that it won’t work). 

When you start looking into this you soon realise why my current (no pun intended) setup is so lame at throwing points.  The peco motors can draw 4A, and in one case I am trying to power 2 at once = 8A on a 3A rated system.  ah.

Thus it does seem sensible to move to

1) Latching, if I am to butcher the points and make them DCC friendly, and in the process killing the springs

2) Less of a current draw to get good reliable throw

3) Slow motion for realism.

Thus I am still proposing to switch to fulgurex motors. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I havnt used these motors myself, but know they are infinitely better than the peco ones. One comment though (nearly said point there...) - it is possible to DCC friendly-ise peco points without losing the self latching. All I do is replace the rail joiner between the frog and the switch blade with a plastic one, and add droppers to the blade to give a constant electrical feed to the blade rather than relying on the blade/stock rail connection.

Cheers, Pete