MTH battery tester

Thank you Marty

 

Clem k

Thanks Marty as that's a great tool!!

 

And I have most of those components in stock! 

One thing I did not mention.  If you are going to test a fan motor in an MTH steam engine, I like to disconnect the tender when the board is in the tender.  If the board is in the boiler, pull the 4 pin connector from the board.  If you are doing a diesel, pull the 4 pin connector.

 

I keep lower voltage in my test battery for fan motors.  I have seen fan motors that will not work and if you hit them with 9 volts you may get them to spin.  If you put the probes on an LED and it does not light, reverse the leads.

I test fan motors on 5V, then lower it to 2V.  If they won't run on 2V, they get replaced.

 

Good move John.  I test to see if I have 5 volts at the motor and if I do and it does not work, I hit it with 6 volts and many times it will spin then see if the 5 volts will now get it going.  I hate fan motors with a passion.  My observation having dealt with very large numbers of them is that the fan motors used in the original Protosound are still the best yet.

 

Many people hit the suspect motor with nine volts to test it.  In many cases it will spin with higher voltage and still crap out with the 5 volts.   The guy who develops this better mousetrap (fan motors) will get rich.

Nice Marty. Do you have a clearer picture of your diagram?  G

Sheesh Marty. If you share this for free, how you going to make money?

G, when you save the first picture to your computer, the image is much sharper.

Guys, the picture in the book is old and not very clear.  I did it as a scan and will try to do a photo of it and see what happens.

 

Joe, I will share anything that forum members can use.  I am about the hobby and not the money.  I will get back shortly.

Marty, Joe is correct.  When I saved it the picture is fine.  Thanks, G

Marty, the charging plug connections to test the batteries in the locomotive/tender without removal, right?  That's a pretty neat idea!

Here they are at the best the old paper will give up.  I do not endorse RS parts but that was put in when the article was done.

 

Thank you Marty for sharing the knowledge.

 

Kris

What's the switch for?

 

 

Bringing the lightbulb on to create a load for battery testing.  When you plug into a locomotives charging port it gets turned on to see how the battery is under a load.

OK, it didn't show on the schematic, I figured it was something like that.

 

Another question.  What do you get out of the DCS remote?  Is the battery voltage the tether connector?

John,  my post  explained  that the switch was not shown in my last paragraph.  This was a project that kept growing over the years. 

I missed that, I went back and your original post answered the questions.

 

Thanks, pretty handy tool you made there.

 

Thanks Marty. I'll have to get started on one soon.

Ralph

Marty, which terminals on the remote 4-pin connector give the battery read out?

 

Thanks very much for posting this.  I appreciate the effort.  I intend to tackle this after I clear out some ongoing projects.

Marty,

Thank you for taking the time to post this for all of us. It's a really neat and well thought out device and I look forward to trying to make one myself. I enjoy projects like this as much as I enjoy the trains.

Robert, the center two wires.  With fully charged batteries you should read 4 volts when you turn your remote on.  The remote uses the rest.  If you start reading less than 4 volts it is time to address the batteries.

 

I have always used the tester at York at the DCS users meeting.  I run 6 remotes on my layout and hit them about every other week with the tester.  I run my remotes STEAM-DIESEL-ELECTRIC with a clone remote for each.

Marty, What resistor did you use for the LED tester?  G

A 560 ohm.

Marty,

   Very cool piece of technical testing gear, you should make and sell it.

PCRR/Dave

Marty:

 

Could you simply take the MTH battery charger, cut off the wire near the plug, then connect each wire to a multimeter pin that will plug into a standard multimeter. I would connect the MTH charger wires to a spare set of multimeter probe wires, then plug the wires into the multimeter and set the multimeter to read DC volts. Would this work?

 

After recharging the 3V and 5V engine batteries, at what voltage level is each of the batteries considered worn out and requires a new battery?

 

Thanks: Joe K

 

thanks: JK

You can, but you need to have a load such as the light bulb to truly test a battery.  A dead battery can show a No load potential, but soon as loaded the voltage drops off significantly.

 

The battery that is dead won't take the charge and when loaded will immediately drop in voltage beyond a useful value.  G

Great work Marty! 

Looks to be O gauge's handy and versatile version of the swiss army knife or Leatherman multi-tool.

George is correct.  This is why I installed the light and switch.  If I read a battery that is reading good, I throw the switch to introduce a load (lightbulb) on the battery.  If the battery is good the reading will be about the same with a load.  If the battery is not good, you will see the meter heading down as soon as the load is introduced.  I have seen batteries people stated they checked and are good.  When checked with a load they are not good.

 

What I made was something I needed as I work on a few MTH trains on occasions.  I think it is a tool that people would pay for if it was available.   I tried this with Mike and it did not get him excited.  Someone who works on trains would have to get involved in producing this. 

 

Use of this tool is not restricted to MTH trains.  I use it very often to test LEDs  in Lionel trains.  I use it weekly to test smoke fan motors in Lionel trains.  I am a huge fan of my Fluke meter but this can also be used to test low DC voltage in any train.  I am big on any test equipment that  saves time and aggravation.

HI Marty

 

You stated 560 ohms, forgive me as I am a rookie at this how many watts?

 

Kris

I used 1/2 W but you could use 1/4 W.

"print"

Thanks Marty

When are you going to take orders for one for we non-electron folks?

Thanks Marty. A very useful tool indeed. 

Nice tool Marty, a mini load tester, and so much more!

Don

Thanks Marty for sharing your test rig, looks very useful and will definitely save time when trouble shooting battery issues and Especially weather or not a fan motor is Shaky or not!!
I'm amazed that these motors last as long as they do!

Can you still buy the older fan motors as you mentioned were much better and last longer!!

Thanks for your test rig diagrams and explanations of the device,I wish radio shack had not gone chapter 11, where will we get boxes and switches and thing like you had used when building your test set!I my self have made similar rigs when i use to trouble- shoot Xray machines for the pseg nuclear power plant in N.J.

I love how test rigs simplify testing of different electronic equipment also!

Alan Mancus

I had one issue with one of my big boys sound cutting in and out and had a new battery in it! you know how i solve the riddle, I put in a BCR and the problem  went away permanently.The Proto 1 engine never hiccuped again ounce i put in the new BCR, what great invention! 

again

Thanks again Marty for a great invention.

Alan Mancus

I built mine and works, thank you Marty