Giles' misc. Work bench.

Giles

Giles

Western Thunderer
It's finished now apart from any paint tidging I might do (a steel finish on the face of the dumb buffers for instance). It is jam packed internally. Wires take up so much space..... I had ordered the receiver configured for the F outputs to take an Add board to control the fourth motor, but it came without the F outputs wired, and I discovered that they weren't configured either. No blame to Micron - Andy's service has always been superb - he just forgot this one thing. However, it was a very dodgy thing soldering wires into the middle of the board rather than the edge, and not something I want to make a habit of! It took me a bit of a while to configure them correctly too, as I should have read further down the programming sheet! However, I got there in the end and all the bits work.



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oldravendale

oldravendale

Western Thunderer
Tell us more, Ken. Where from, how much £ and is the application the same as conventional wheel scrapers or similar?

(And if you've already supplied this info previously I apologise for not paying attention.):D

Brian
 
simond

simond

Western Thunderer
That’s a difficult question. There are online wire size calculators which give sizes dependent on length, electrical load, and allowable temperature rise, but they are aimed at electrical installers, and I haven’t found one that gives useful results for loco wiring, and I’ve never felt the need to develop a spreadsheet to confirm experience.

The motor/decoder of most models will take less than an amp for which 28 gauge will probably be fine, but a short circuit between one wheel, and the rest of the wheels on that side of the loco, can easily occur if you run onto a live frog with the wrong polarity, ie you’re trailing the point set against you.

It’s disappointing when your carefully built loco chassis comes to an abrupt halt in a cloud of acrid smoke. You probably try to do this only once.

if you catch it or your track supply / booster is quick enough, you might not have a problem, and I too use 28 or 30 gauge wire. I hadn’t realised that it’s available on eBay, I guess it was a sensible place to look! I’m still working my way through a multipack from ESU purchased some time back.
 
G

garethashenden

Western Thunderer
I notice that this crane, and others like it, don't have outriggers. Presumably this greatly reduces the lifting capacity. Have you done any testing to see what load limit the model is capable of?
 
Giles

Giles

Western Thunderer
Not proper tests, but I had a handy chunk of steel in the form of a chuck key, which it was very happy with when the jib was out horizontal, so I decided I was happy that it would cope with any appropriate model load. This one would be typical of a 10 ton crane - but that is not to say it would handle 10 tons at full reach!
My 7mm narrow gauge crane had to be balanced and weighted quite carefully to get good working performance out of it, as too little weight at the back end would have it topple forwards (when slewed at 90 degrees) and too much backend weight would have caused it to fall over backwards with no load and the jib lifted high. A good useful balance was achieved, but a longer jib would have been problematic.

https://flic.kr/p/2p7FT4p
 
Giles

Giles

Western Thunderer
I do go from one thing to another...... about four years ago, I pre-ordered a a green Class 37 from Accurascale, as it seemed rather nice, and I have a soft spot for them. It eventually got delivered this week, and I promptly changed the wheels to EM, which was quite straight forward. It runs well, although it's obviously designed to run at the scale maximum speed, which I will never be able to accommodate. Running well at 1mph is much more useful to me!
Much more important is that its factory fresh, which won't do. Out with the oil paints and powders and reduce its resale value.

There's still more to do ...

https://flic.kr/p/2pf3M3X
 
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