DIY Rectangular Smoke Unit Replacement PCB

To Gunnrunner John...

Where would this amazing hobby be without you & your knowledge!

Please one day write a book or make a video of all of your amazing fixes throughout the years-

It would be a shame not to have as a legacy of one of the most intelligent men this hobby ever had...

                                                                                                                       Kudos to you Sir!-

@Sal V posted:

To Gunnrunner John...

Where would this amazing hobby be without you & your knowledge!

Please one day write a book or make a video of all of your amazing fixes throughout the years-

It would be a shame not to have as a legacy of one of the most intelligent man this hobby ever had...

                                                                                                                       Kudos to you Sir!-

Ditto on the kudos!

John, what do you use for gaskets? I don't see any available for that smoke unit...I think it's 610-8057-200.

I broke a gasket making the hole bigger is why I asked. No emergency since I don't need the unit just yet, but wondering.

They used to have gaskets available for that smoke unit, I still have a few in my parts box.  I guess when those are gone, I'll be making them using the gasket paper I have for the purpose.

I still have the pieces...missing a couple of short straight edges. I can probably use something on those edges. The result of drilling a larger hole thru the small hole. I have some leather punches...might be an interesting thing to try making a gasket.

I use a standard paper punch to punch the 1/4" round hole through the gaskets.

The PCB board house finished my boards in about four days, but the Chinese sat on them for almost two weeks before the turned them loose, they just arrived today.  Preliminary measurements and checkout look great, I have no doubt they'll work.  They save me a little work each time as I almost always remove the 27 ohm resistor and install a 20 ohm one, or an 8 ohm for Legacy.  For any upgrades, I also drill out the fan intake hole.  This way I get to start with the hole already drilled and I don't have to remove the resistor to install the proper one for my application.

Having the 5V supply separate from the smoke resistor allows me to occasionally use that as a aux 5VDC supply since it's right there and doesn't take any additional space.

25 boards for $10.90 shipped, not too bad...

Very neat John, nice idea. So do these fit the venerable 8057-200 SMU? Any others besides? A cool part about this is you could build up 3-4 each in 18 or 8 ohm ahead of time and have them all set to just drop in. The price was certainly right.

Rod

John,

Thanks for posting this information.

Will these be offered for sale either directly or through other means?

best,

@Rod Stewart posted:

Very neat John, nice idea. So do these fit the venerable 8057-200 SMU? Any others besides? A cool part about this is you could build up 3-4 each in 18 or 8 ohm ahead of time and have them all set to just drop in. The price was certainly right.

Yep, they were patterned to be an exact fit for the standard Lionel rectangular smoke unit.

@DaveGG posted:

Will these be offered for sale either directly or through other means?

I wasn't planning on it, but I posted the Gerber files for anyone to order some for themselves.  At $10.90 for 25 boards, it's simply not cost effective to try to sell these in a onesie-twosie fashion, the shipping costs would dwarf the board costs.

Gerber files posted to first post in the thread, here's a link to the Gerber files.

Rectangular Smoke PCB Gerber Files.zip

I recommend one of the many overseas PCB makers, since these are large enough to be costly with OSHPark.  Three boards from OSHPark cost $9.90, and 25 boards from JLCPCB cost $10.90 both including shipping costs.  It takes a little longer to get them from overseas, but the wait is profitable.

Thanks!