Norton posted:Jim Harrington posted:So what would be the correct way to wire this, and have synchronized chuffing and puffing?
Thanks
There are actually many correct ways to do this. One adds to GRJ's retirement account the other adds to your retirement fund by the money you have saved. The smoke unit you selected with the 5V regulator for the fan you could have rewired it to drive a simple DPST relay. Connect your chuff switch to one side of the relay coil, connect the other side of the relay coil to the 5V regulator output. Using one pair of relay contacts connect one to common and its mate to motor ground after removing the trace that grounds the motor. The relay will now be closing the motor circuit instead of the PC board ground.
Now connect the other relay contacts pair, one to common (pin 3-4 R2LC) and the other to pin 17 on the R2LC (chuff input). You now have perfectly synch puff and chuff. Reed relays are about 8 bucks.
The least elegant way is to use two reed switches, one for fan and the other for chuff. You still need a regulated 5V for the fan but that would have been available on that particular smoke unit.
A third way involves a pair of transistors to isolate chuff input from fan drive. again a few bucks in parts.
Pete
Of course, none of those ways gives you the sharply defined chuffing that the dynamic braking of the Super-Chuffer gives you. The motor coasts to a stop and so only slow chuffing is recognizable. Also, the chuffs are as long as the chuff switch is closed. If it's only closed a short time, you get short chuffs, if it's closed for most of the cycle, you don't see any breaks. Finally, you get no smoke at idle unless the chuff switch happens to land on the closed part of the rotation. We won't bother to add the lighting effects that the Super-Chuffer gives you. 
There's a reason I developed the Super-Chuffer, those methods didn't yield satisfactory results, at least IMO.
Mikado 4501 posted:gunrunnerjohn posted:Long term when you find the R2LC smoke triac has unsoldered itself due to excessive heat dissipation, I want you to remember this thread.
Actually, that typically only happens when the smoke element overheats and shorts, then all the current comes back to the triac.
I'm guessing that's what happened with the K-Line NYC Mikado you showed me last year here? If that's the case, I'll be purchasing some 20's soon.
No, AFAIK, that locomotive is still smoking fine with it's 20 ohm resistor.
