@John Sethian posted:1.1 to 1.4 A on straight DC
Voltage 10.4 Volts
Power: MRC Pure Power DC
Pickup wires go directly to the motors
PS3 board completely disconnected
Current and voltage measured with Fluke digital Multimeters at the power supply
Loco orbiting the track, no train per previous tests
25 laps
10 minutes continuous, no incidents
Estimate 70 SMPH based on lap times
This is twice as fast as previous tests in which halts were observed after 3 minutes
Its also much faster than I would run a train
Conclusion? (I have my own thoughts, but I shall await input from others)
Well now you know what the real draw is, ….1.1-1.4 shouldn’t have killed the PS3 board,…those are numbers I ship off custom builds to have electronics added with no fears,…..so you’re not seeing any spikes, any lurching, motors are fairly cool to the touch after 25 laps?…I have no clue how big your layout is, but I go by time, not laps made….I see you went 10 minutes, so if there was something going askew, I’d expect to see it happen within that time frame…..SO before you go bananas ripping out motors, reach out to GGG ( George ) …..his email is in his profile, ….George can do component level repair to those boards when it’s possible…..I don’t know if John does or not, so I’ll let him defer it back to George, or himself if he wants….I’d let George take a look at the board, and see if he can breathe life back into it….those amp draws on that engine with two Pittmans, going through all that rotating mass is way better than I would think……..I surely wouldn’t be doing motor swaps at those numbers…..I doubt you can clean it up much better than that,…..BUT since you’ve got it running on DC, pull your train and THEN let’s see your numbers…….the numbers I quoted you on my builds, are same as yours, but pulling 35 scale freight cars for hours…..😉
Pat
