Are there any silent power supplies - no "buzzing" and no fans?

@Kelunaboy posted:

a Lionel "brick" type power supply, are these buzz-less and fan-less?

Oh yes.

No fan or any noisemaker in my Lionel PowerHouse 180 bricks, they're as silent as church mice when they're running.   A slight click when the breaker trips for a derailment, but I forgive that.

Many transformers buzz because the metal plates that make up the core of the transformer are loose.  Some can be tightened up by tightening up the screw and bolts holding them together but most can not.  Some can be bumped to make them stop buzzing for a short time.

One fix might be to coat the exposed part of the core plates with some kind of high temperature varnish made for this purpose and this may glue the plates together to keeping the from buzzing.  Others will have to comment on this.

My layout has three Lionel LW transformers, two are quiet and one buzzes or hum's from time to time.  I whack it with my hand and it will quiet down most times.  I do not know if he buzzing is from the core plates or from the Bakelite case and the transformer frame.

Charlie

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

No fan or any noisemaker in my Lionel PowerHouse 180 bricks, they're as silent as church mice when they're running.   A slight click when the breaker trips for a derailment, but I forgive that.

Well shouldn't forgive that you need to fire the engineer.

Yes. Lionel 180w bricks are the way to go. A ton of power and zero noise.

The bricks alone however are a fixed 18v. They require a powermaster,  TPC, or AVC via Tmcc/Legacy to set/ vary the voltage.

Otherwise, the Lionel  GW 180 comes with a throttle similar to the CW80...minus the noise.

Thanks for the info!  

Last layout had mix of MTH, TMCC, and conventional locomotives.  I used the Z-4000 for fixed voltage and DCS for both MTH and Lionel command control.   I switched the TIU off and used the Z-4000 for running conventional.   I used a separate loop to program TMCC.

Now I have added LionChief and plan to have DCS and Cab2 (Cab3 later) signaling through the rails at the same time with LionChief using Bluetooth or RF.

To get the power to track looks like I’ll need the adapter cable 6-14194.

Getting complicated…

I was looking for a 180W brick on fleabay, and came across a 135W brick, PowerMaster, and a Cab-1, so I bought that. When it arrived, it looked like 1990's vintage. The brick hums more than the 180W bricks.

I have no experience with one but the MRC AH601 generally gets high marks. It does have handles if you want to run conventional without added components. Others can speak to the noise levels but they appear to be quiet in the videos.

Pete

The classical way to stop the buzzing is to place/force/jam wooden wedges between the coils and the iron core laminations.

@Norton posted:

I have no experience with one but the MRC AH601 generally gets high marks. It does have handles if you want to run conventional without added components. Others can speak to the noise levels but they appear to be quiet in the videos.

Pete

Love mine, no noise, fast breakers, steady dependable power, works with everybody's loco's electronics. Wish they still made these, getting hard to find now.

A postwar "Type R" ZW has the potential to be essentially silent. (250W and early generation non-"R" ZW's have a different core design which can be inherently noisy.)

I say potential because most ZW-R's are old enough that the adhesive used to assemble the two sections of the core has dried out and given way, leading to the core sections vibrating at the power line frequency -- often quite loudly. In some instances, the way in which the adhesive was applied may have allowed a slight gap or unevenness, which would lead to transformers with a slight hum even fresh out of the factory.

A good ZW restorer usually knows how to do the work. The core is simply removed from the transformer, at least partially, and the short "end cap" portion of the core is separated, cleaned and then re-assembled with epoxy. Then the entire transformer can be inspected for safety and serviced with new rollers and other parts if needed, and then put back into service for another half-century or more. If you're comfortable with and understand line-voltage electrical stuff like many of us in the hobby, it's not hard to do yourself.

I have a ZW that was basically flawless in every way except that it hummed and buzzed quite loudly. I repaired the core with fresh epoxy and clamped it back together to cure overnight; the result is that the transformer is pretty much ghostly quiet.

I have run six Lionel 180 watt bricks for about 20 years. They are silent.

Jan

The ZW type R has a riveted core and is usually very quiet.

@Jon G posted:

The ZW type R has a riveted core...

All type R ZWs have the riveted core, but not all riveted core ZWs are type R.

@Norton posted:

I have no experience with one but the MRC AH601 generally gets high marks. It does have handles if you want to run conventional without added components. Others can speak to the noise levels but they appear to be quiet in the videos.

Pete

@Darrell posted:

Love mine, no noise, fast breakers, steady dependable power, works with everybody's loco's electronics. Wish they still made these, getting hard to find now.

Same here.  I have two; on one of them one side no longer works.  There's a thread on the forum about fixing it, but I haven't gotten around to it.

Can still sometimes be found for a reasonable price at meets, but be sure to test it before buying.

Edit:  The thread on fixing it is https://ogrforum.com/...al-transformer-issue.  I finally got around to fixing mine - very easy. 

@ADCX Rob posted:

All type R ZWs have the riveted core, but not all riveted core ZWs are type R.

That's true, and the rivets themselves are part of what makes for a quieter core -- but not quite all of it. At least not in the case of the typical ZW.

The ZW's core looks like a rectangle, but it's made of two stacks of plates. One is shaped like a "U" and the other is one of the short ends of the rectangle. It's a small rectangle itself except that two corners are notched so that it fits snugly against the main "U" shaped piece with surfaces in contact with both the ends and the first part of the interior sides of the "U". That's where the core gets bonded together. In any kind of core like this, even if all the riveted plates are securely held together, if the surfaces where the two sections meet aren't completely mechanically coupled, the surfaces can vibrate against each other causing more noise -- and also some additional heat (which is technically a small power loss). The more tightly-coupled the two pieces of the core are, the better the magnetic flux through the joint is -- all the better for transformer efficiency.

So, either during manufacturing or repair, the two core pieces need to be completely coupled, bonded with epoxy, and clamped while the adhesive cures to ensure a tight, strong mechanical bond -- and the result is that all vibrations travel as smoothly as possible through the core, keeping it nice and quiet.

Batteries, technically a power supply, don’t make any noise. In fact, just as an experiment, I’ve used some rechargeable batteries from power tools to run my DC locomotives.
And . . . no jokes about why transformers hum? This group is slipping. 😊

Steve