Since Pitman no longer offers motors to our train market I think it would be interesting for Lionel to once again look into manufacturing the Odyssey motor. What say you?
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DO they no longer offer motors? Or is it just at a price Lionel no longer wants to pay?
The odyssey motor is merely an improved pullmor. I find it hard to believe it would be better than a can motor.
At this point. I would think the larger size of a pullmor design motor would get in the way of all the whizz bang features Lionel has been cramming into modern locos.
Ricko, from what I’ve heard here on the forum, pitman has priced themselves out of the small market we belong to.
Years ago when I saw the odyssey motor demonstration at York it did not appear to need all the special electronics for cruise control and low speeds.
Pittman moved to industrial customers and their small brushed motors shot up in enough in price to make them price prohibitive for the model train makers. I don't see the old AC Odyssey Motor ever coming back, it would cost far more than the can motors we use today. I would like to see Lionel drop the crappy Canon motor, maybe they could go back to the Buehler motors, they're way higher quality than the Canon.
@romiller49 posted:Ricko, from what I’ve heard here on the forum, pitman has priced themselves out of the small market we belong to.
Years ago when I saw the odyssey motor demonstration at York it did not appear to need all the special electronics for cruise control and low speeds.
Rod, they would have to completely re-engineer the whole works to incorporate that motor into production…..that would take new tooling, new electronics, and make models go through the stratosphere in pricing,…….the quicker & more economical solution was to simply go shopping for another DC can motor vendor….Lionel went with Cannon, & Buehler, and MTH went with first, SPG motors ( Korean made Pittman knock off ) and then went with what appears to be a Chinese motor ( those black can motors ) ……..so they’ve already improvised, adapted, and overcame Pittman’s exodus from the hobby industry…….
Pat
I see a lot of problems bringing this back.
#1 Lionel has consolidated their electronics platform for BOTH Legacy and Lionchief Plus 2.0 to the single LCP2 and LCP3 DC can motor driver board. It has a single PWM H-bridge motor control channel. Again, key here is a major switch to a single platform for programming the firmware is what decides the difference VS making and stocking multiple different boards.
#2 We are talking a multi-phase brushless motor design and if you do that with sensor (mostly to start motor from a dead stop) or sensorless and hope the impact of a first pulse possibly being backwards to intended rotation, but you are not doing that with a simple single channel H-bridge motor controller. Again, basically we are talking a purpose built brushless motor control driver that conforms to the existing modular 4 pin PWM signal for conventional and serial data commands for command operation. So at that time, this was a motor and matching motor driver in place of the common DCDS can motor Odyssey driver. It's not unconceivable that they could design and build a similar form factor to the DCDS, same mounting and wiring connections. But the kicker is, Lionel has completely walked away from modular. This first happened in the move to the RCMC series of control board, and then even further down the all in one path with the current LCP2 and LCP3 boards across multiple models and platforms.
#3 So bringing us to today, where again, what is being proposed is yet another board design and matching motor- specific to the Brushless design. And then, does that make any sense to go through that and split the lineup between can motor designs in Lionchief Plus 2.0 engines and now new Legacy and most likely specifically steam currently using Canon brand motors in place of the Pittman?
Again, what this would imply is yet another specific branch of all in one boards, or say they did go back to a separate modular motor driver- is the cost of the physical motor+ motor driver cost effective to the current Canon solution. On so many levels I just think where they are at with the current platform, it is so new, to jump ship again to another platform I think would be risky and costly.
When Pittman dropped out of this industry, MTH went to a company called SPG motors ….now this motor was short lived in the MTH line …….not sure what went down with that deal,…but curiosity got the better of me, so I opened one up for a looksy…….I was very impressed with the construction, pretty much identical to a Pittman, …. Very well built,…..now, I don’t know what went down, but this motor disappeared as fast as it came, and they went with what looks like perhaps a lessor cost Chinese knock off???……maybe SPG’s were too costly and only meant as a band-aid until a less expensive vendor was secured??….I don’t know,…..my buddy Lou did some preliminary checking into SPG, as we do a lot of builds, but I wanna say the cost wasn’t awful, but the quantities scared us away??……anyways, if SPG would be a player in our hobby, we’d have nothing to worry about,…..
Pat
And don't get me wrong, I would love to see a move away from the Canon or at least specify a higher grade brush end bell option. I've discussed the failures at length elsewhere.
John & I have witnessed the failures with the Cannons, and I went as far as to identify the failure,….although that diagnosis was like inspecting the bomb after it went off, …kinda pointless, ….all I succeeded in doing was calling known junk to be junk….several of us have already campaigned our Legacy engines to Pittman swaps….
Pat
@harmonyards posted:my buddy Lou did some preliminary checking into SPG, as we do a lot of builds, but I wanna say the cost wasn’t awful, but the quantities scared us away??……anyways, if SPG would be a player in our hobby, we’d have nothing to worry about,…..
Pat
When I check about two years ago the minimum order was 5 motors and the cost was $95 a motor. I think ball bearings added 50 cents to the cost of each motor. I would assume that a larger, non retail, order would have much lower cost per unit. Like Pat said the SPG motor MTH used for a year or so were dead nuts identical to a Pittman 9000 series.
Lionel must be getting the Canon motors for a much lower cost than what they can get a SPG motor for, otherwise I would assume Lionel would have gone with the SPG motor.
@harmonyards posted:several of us have already campaigned our Legacy engines to Pittman swaps….
Pat
A Pittman drops right in place of a Canon motor with very little effort. Easy swap. I based this swap off the one Pat did in his ESE Hudson.
@RickO posted:The odyssey motor is merely an improved pullmor. I find it hard to believe it would be better than a can motor.
The Odyssey motor technology was that of a synchronous motor coupled to a variable frequency drive where as the Pullmor motor was a universal motor with the stator in series with the rotor. Synchronous motors spin synchronous to the frequency of applied AC whereas the Pullmor spins to the applied voltage.
Synchronous motors w/VFDs are typically 90%+ efficient vs. 65% efficient for a DC can motor.
There is no need for Lionel to bring back the Odyssey motor. The motor is primitive by today's standards. There are lots of AC synchronous motors that are used in the RC hobby. They call them DC brushless, but DC brushless motors are AC synchronous motors. The batteries supply DC to the VFD which rectifies the DC to an AC frequency that is fed to the motor and the speed of rotation of the motor is controlled by the frequency of AC fed to the motor.
Modern diesel electric locomotives are similar. The diesel prime mover drives a generator which produces AC. The AC is rectified to DC. The DC is fed to a VFD which coverts the DC to an AC frequency which is fed to the asynchronous (induction motors) which drive the wheels. This is called an AC-DC-AC drive.
Marklin did this before with their C-Sine motor.
Maybe this has been answered before, and maybe does not belong here, but why is there so many different motor control boards for the TMCC engines made over the years? I just know in any repairs I have made, I had to make sure the "correct" motor control board was installed.
But here is the confusing kicker (at least to me), I now see the same ERR boards being used as replacements to various motor control board installs. Any help to my education would be appreciated.
If you're talking about the DCDS Odyssey I boards, or the early Legacy DCDS Odyssey II boards, the answer is simple. There were a couple of motor types accommodated and they had different parameters it would seem. However the big variability in those boards was the 10-pin connector functions, they programmed them for different functions for different products. So, the hardware was the same, but the software was different.
The K-Line cruise boards were similar, they had different functions for different engines.
Also, it's not uncommon to be able to swap a different DCDS in for one that's "not available", I've done this more than once.
@DaveGG posted:Maybe this has been answered before, and maybe does not belong here, but why is there so many different motor control boards for the TMCC engines made over the years? I just know in any repairs I have made, I had to make sure the "correct" motor control board was installed.
But here is the confusing kicker (at least to me), I now see the same ERR boards being used as replacements to various motor control board installs. Any help to my education would be appreciated.
Sorta kinda doesn’t belong here, but it’s Rod’s thread, so if he minds, he can say to delete it,…
there are many different drivers, cause there’s many different motor types, combination of motors, no Oddesy, & Oddesy…..
Pat
@DaveGG posted:Maybe this has been answered before, and maybe does not belong here, but why is there so many different motor control boards for the TMCC engines made over the years? I just know in any repairs I have made, I had to make sure the "correct" motor control board was installed.
But here is the confusing kicker (at least to me), I now see the same ERR boards being used as replacements to various motor control board installs. Any help to my education would be appreciated.
EDIT: I see others typed similar answers while I was pulling research and details.
The why is easy- it's not "just" a motor driver. In some engines, because the motor controller knows the actual speed of the engine- they could use some of the lighting outputs to switch off and on at certain speeds (cab light, inspection lights), where in other cases, firebox flicker or glow was driven by that board.
It comes down to the fact that the TMCC baseline feature - provided by the modular R2lC is somewhat limited.
If you wanted to add certain features to engines- then you had to start adding more boards or depend on the DCDS motor driver board and it's outputs to operate those extra lights.
Then another aspect of any closed loop speed control is PID (Proportional, Integral, Derivative ) gains to prevent oscillation and promote smooth running and speed control in general. So yes, another example of specific programming built into certain modules and firmware revisions They were designed and tuned for the driveline they were mated with. On a factory DCDS Odyssey motor driver, at best you have on/off control of the feedback loop. There simply are not a lot of user settings and it depends on you getting the right board for the right engine. Early versions used a 3 pin tachometer sensor with Hall effect sensor and magnetic encoder rings. Later more advanced Odyssey drivers use 4 pin optical encoders with fine tooth optical encoder rings- which provides a much higher pulse count and thus smoother slower speed operation compared to an early and somewhat limited magnetic encoders.
EDIT: ERR has multiple (2) versions of the (Cruise M modular) board and they implement various lighting control features- example Diesel alternating flashing ditch lights function when the board sees the horn command. They also can perform the duty cycle output pin.
Also, ERR Cruise M incorporated more settings like large and small motor size that are related to a PID gain profile to run smoother and also- how the back EMF sensing function effectively can read the poles of the motor to know the resulting RPM.
@Vernon Barry posted:ERR has multiple versions of the board and they mimmic or implement various lighting control features- example Diesel alternating flashing ditch lights function when the board sees the horn command. Also, ERR Cruise M incorporated more settings like large and small motor size that are related to a PID gain profile to run smoother and also- how the back EMF sensing function effectively can read the poles of the motor to know the resulting RPM.
Actually, ERR only has two versions of the Cruise Commander M, and the one output that changes is on J4, pin-2 is serial data out on the generic version and duty cycle on the Odyssey version.
There is only a single version of the Cruise Commander, it has none of those fancy features, it just gives you the functionality of the R2LC and of course, cruise control.
