[Richard Johnson]

***
Yes, it is equally OK for AC, DC or DCC use. It will give constant lighting with no flickering on all power types. It will make sure the lights stay on for AC or DC layouts, even when the train stops as there is a LOT of power storage - supercapacitors with more than 200,000 microfarads.

The flickerfree is totally regulated on input power use too so there is no significant power use or any current surge at all as might be expected with big capacitance - a full train of ten coaches with flickerfree will draw less current than one sound equipped OO scale locomotive.

Any form of power pickup is acceptable, live axle, wipers, whatever you prefer.

There is no "Fault" with the system. The unit takes a few seconds only to reach full charge, and once that is done there is NO variane in brightness at all - power on or power off... You can even lift the coach off the track and depending on how many LED you have installed, it can stay lit for up to one hour.

Richard

QUOTE (double00 @ 15 Mar 2009, 03:45) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Will this system apply to DC 00 gauge model coaches?
How does the power required picked up? Only coaches adapted for lighting, use a sprung metal leaf located between the bogy wheel axles. Fleischman coaches in some instances use this method.
I am made to believe that this system require bogy wheels are insulated on on wheel to enable the correct polarity voltage to be picked up. A fault is that the LEDs vary in brilliance according to voltage applied to the rails feeding the locomotive/coach - as stated a suitable capacitor is essential to give a flicker free lighting within the coach while in motion.

 

[Richard Johnson]

*** The new pickups are phosphor bronze spring pickups which are added to the coach axle and do not add any wheel pressure.

They always contact the axle but are a smooth sliding fit for the axle, so add no perceptable drag. You will need wheelsets with metal wheels and one wheel live to the axle. If both your wheels are insulated then use a brass "shorting disc" ex Bill bedford, or conductive epoxy to make one wheel on each axle live (Markits wheels and many others are available one shorted/one insulated too).

dead easy for any modeller to install, unlike conventional wiper pickups.

The 4mm scale version for 2mm axles will be a couple of weeks or so, the N version for 1.5mm axles is available now. $29.95 for a pack of 48 (usually in fact, 50+ - they are weight counted and we try to ensure we are never short, so end up being slightly generous).

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

*** BBedford only does an etched disc that is slipped on the axle and pressed against the wheel - it is to short a dead axle to one metal wheel to make it live. Its usually used in finescale work but will be OK for OO wheelsets. Personally I use conductive epoxy which is quick and easy to do when I need to short a wheel to an axle.

most wheels sold now on H * B coaches have live axles. Of the two, I personally prefer the hornby wheelsets which are quite economical and universally (so far) very true running - I haven't seen anything later than the B Mk1 coaches but was less happy with these - slightly rough ends to the bearing tapers which wear axleboxes and the basic wheel is less true on average than the H wheels.

Sources I'd recommend are either H or Markits 14mm coach wheels to replace the wheels on the coaches you have....both appear to be turned from solid and are dead true

Richard

PS: (Psychic statement)

..... puts hands to forehead: Yessss Paul, the Hornby 14mm wheels are live to the axle one side..... they will work exactly as you wish them to .

 

[Richard Johnson]

*** See PS in previous post

 

[Richard Johnson]

*** Hi peter
use double sided (copper both sides) 1.6mm fibreglass PCB material for the coach floor.... Then you could easily isolate the bogies by cutting copper around them but still have a solderable surface for the fixing and details on both sides.

1.6mm Fibreglass is very stable compared to the phenolic boards, and having it double sided further increases stability. Not too exxy either....

If you were doing a kit, you could have the floor precut and etched to take care of it... PCB can be CNC cut very precisely at the same time as any kingpin drilling is pre-done, so it'd be a ready to use item for the kit purchasers.... It's only need at most the same pre-use smoothing that etched brass parts need anyway.

 

[Richard Johnson]

*** I treat my hobby as very much "hands on" so give full credit to all modellers who have a go at creating anything to add to the quality of the stock or layout so well done... and necely presented too.

You do need to be quite careful adding any form of capacitor without careful charge/discharge rate control/current limiting or you will end up with a current surge on turn on that may at an extreme harm a decoder and will be quite significant as an overall load with a train of coaches.... And without that control, it doesn't really stabilise the lights that much!

It doesn't need to be all that much capacitance in fact to stop short circuit protection from resetting reliably.

-----------------------------

I do have to say though that its a lot of added work given that the costing as indicated is actually somewhat higher than using Flickerfree which is easy to use, has a total fix for flickering, no current surge or significant layout loading AND gives totally constant light (even when stopped) for standard DC or AC layouts as well as DCC... it is easily small enough for N and totally invisible when installed in any other scale... When bought in a 3 or 6 pack it comes with all parts needed inc LEDs and a specially created circuit board for very, very easy and reliable LED mounting at any chosen spacing.

It can, by the way, also be switched on and off instantly by a decoder if wanted.... It needs only a low cost micro relay which is switched by the function decoder. I do this in a sleeping car where I want to be able to change which of the compartments are lit.

Edwin: Re readback on FN decoders... The easiest thing to add (and you can leave it in place) is a grain of wheat / grain of rice bulb: This gives enough impedance to allow readback and can be left in place if covered with some black heatshrink. To keep it from ever getting more than slightly warm, you can add a small value 1/4 watt metal film resistor in series so it only gets about 1/2 voltage. (value depends a bit on rail voltage, but in general for ohms law calculation I'd allow about 50mA and drop 6 volts anyway...)

regards

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

*** I liked your use of the brass rods: I thought it an elegant and tidy answer using easily avaiable material. When we created the custom designed PCB we did it for a similar purpose - to make assembly and physical location both easy to do and extremely tidy.

The PCBs are also available separately by the way - not just in the Flickerfree packs.

Reset issues are more likely at short recovery... the short circuit protection sees the capacitors as an unexpected peak or abnormal load and will not reset - this has been an ongoing problem especially with some brands of US made sound decoders with large caps ... and various anti flicker devices.

Re the micro relays - should be less than £1 each if they are carefully sourced. They only need low current handling so a chip based relay equivalent would als be OK.. and that is super small/low cost.

Flickerfree has no problem with decoders or anywhere else - As DCCconcepts are an NMRA registered DCC manufacturer and modeller I made sure of that .

It presents virtually no added load copared to LEDs only and has been carefully engineered that way - a whole train of flickerfree equipped coahes adds less load than a single locomotive. There is NO peak under any circumstances and we use 200,000 microfarads.

Re Flickerfree, Bromsgrove models have stock

Richard

QUOTE (shumifan50 @ 18 Mar 2009, 00:30) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi,
I have a coach with 4 caps fitted (100uF each) one per function output and the FL-4 seems to cope fine. It also does not cause any resets. To put a resistor in series with the caps would require a high wattage and they will get warm if the objective is to be achieved.

As far as cost is concerned:
The main cost is the LEDs. If you source these cheaper then the cost would seriously drop. The flexible strip ones I used was because I had them as I thought they could just be glued to the coach roof. The spacing was wrong and I had to come up with a different idea. Any LED could be used. The brass bars makes for very neat fitting on the insert and easy subsequent maintenance. The brass rods are not that expensive as you get 10 x 300mm for £3.50 (enough for about 7 coaches). The rest is just soldering. The main idea here is to use the brass rods. The caps are an afterthought and, depending on cost when you have many coaches, the flicker-free unit might be better. Driving the flicker-free unit with a decoder might pose a problem depending on how much current it draws when charging the super cap. Charging a 100uF cap without current restriction causes a very short current draw and the FL-4 doesn't seem to mind. If you use bigger caps, you might run into problems.
The way to control how long the lights remain on without power can mostly be controlled with the resistor and I found that 10k ohm gives ample light with the LEDs I am using.

I would guess you could use one flicker-free unit per coach and use 4 releays pulled by the decoder to switch the power from the flicker-free unit to the LEDs that are switched on. I have no idea what micro relays would cost.

Where can I get flicker-free units and how much are they?