Shield cans for Railsounds power supplies

I see you beat me to this request Dale, looking forward to seeing if we can find one.

Funny, The earliest RS Power boards I have from the late 90s early 00s had the shield.  Then I saw a period where RS PS did not have them.  Now they are back:-)  G

I've made a few using mu metal from old power supplies. Finding the correct material will be harder than actually cutting one out though I suspect other more common materials would  be an improvement.

Pete

Given that we're really shielding for EMI and not trying to block magnetic effects, I think any metal will do.  The existing cans appear to be just tin, nothing exotic.

Looking at them, it appears it wouldn't be that difficult to cut one out, I may take a stab at it.

This stuff just keeps getting more and more complicated, signal boosters, ground planes, special antennas. Now we need to put trash cans over parts of out IC boards.

What is going on.

Welcome to the real world where things are not always simple.

Issues tend to get blown out of proportion here. Most do not have these problems. if you are not having signal issues with a particular engine, nothing needs to be done. The ones most likely to affected are those where all of the electronics are in the same unit like diesels  and electrics and then only if the audio amplifier is in close proximity to the radio board. 

Pete

I hope you mean the power supply, as that's the one that gets the trash can.

Dale,

I think I have a dead railsounds power audio board that does not have a shield over the coil.

Email me at captnkraft@aol.com if that is what you are seeking.

I think Dale is looking for them with the shield, I think I'll be able to help him out soon, Marty is sending me some.

Dale, I anxiously await your solution, because spending $40 a pop to replace otherwise good boards with the shielded version, seems a bit excessive.

Unfortunately, I don't have any dead ones to donate to the cause, but I do have loose copies of both versions, which I could take pictures of, if that would help.

Not really. I just took measurements off one still mounted to the board. Most of the bends are 90 degrees with one bent twice (180 degrees) for the mounting hole as I recall. Not exactly rocket science.

Pete

We're waiting to see your efforts at making a few.

If you are referring to me John, I mentioned above I made a few many years ago. They're installed in engines at the moment. I can easily make a more. If someone has one handy and can make some measurements I can probably have one made today.

Pete

I believe Dale's idea is to have a template so he could cut out multiples without carefully measuring each one.  I suspect I could make one without too much trouble, but I wouldn't want to spend the time to measure for it each time I created one.

Why would you have to make a measurement every time you wanted to make one? I doubt Dale is going to make a die to stamp these out. With one set of measurements you would cut out the outline. That first one would be your template. Even if you only made a few, laying out one would take about 30 seconds with the measurements in hand. Like I said, many here are making it sound more difficult than it is.

Pete

I got the dead boards from Marty, and adding the shield is just unsolder it and slip it on the new one, it's very easy.

I have a dead board for Dale that I'm sending him this week to do his magic investigation on it!!

It could be that a simpler solution might work, the issue wouldn't be doing the fix, but rather testing the effect.  You almost need an EMI lab to see what effect you're having on the noise emissions.

I lieu of test equipment you could just put the engine on the tracks and see if the signal issues go away. Empiricism rules.

Pete

Dale, I sent you a dead one two days ago.

Thanks, Marty!