Swapping LionChief Control system into a regular transformer controled engine? Perhaps a Williams?

kj356 posted:

 

On the LionChief engines there are some things attached to the motor what are they? Diodes or resistors what is the purpose of these??

Thanks for any suggestions.

Chokes...

It would mostly come down to the max. amp draw on the two motors. The size of Williams motors varied greatly since the 70s.

But if your talking Williams modern can motors it likely will contol it fine.They both use dc at the motor and thats half the battle.

The amp draw just needs to be a close match. If you have an amp meter, check them both QUICKLY at max volt and stalled from turning.

THE EXCEPTION: some motors can create "radio noise" that might interfere with signals from the remote or be seen as signals.

"Chokes" are filters to counter this. I assume they are small disks? Those would be called capacitors when you shop, bi-polar choke capacitors because you are going to invert the motor power polatiry as you change directions. You might have to add some to the Williams motors.  In fact, it is a good idea. You can swap them over and try those on the Williams. The Williams might have some already if you look. If so, try leaving them, its just a filter, no biggie.

No guarantees, but chances are very good this will work.  Its certainly worth a try.

Most of the LC stuff has a pretty small motor, if you're talking a typical Williams, you are going to be taxing the LC electronics.

The Williams circuit boards are rated at 6 amps if I am correct, so that would be a starting point of reference. There would be plenty of room inside the Williams engine after removing the Williams circuit board. The Williams motors are wired in parallel from the circuit board from the factory.

Whether the Lion Chief circuit board can handle the Williams motor current is another issue, I can't comment on that as I don't have any information on the Lion Chief circuit boards.

Lee Fritz

I have not taken apart one of the smaller LionChief engines yet to see what is in there, but if they use the same FR024n/FR5305 HEXFETs for the motor driver that my other LionChief engines use, there should be no problems at all in using them in any other DC motor'd engine.  The FR024n would be the 'weak link' rated at 17 amps, where the FR5305 is rated at 31 amps.  Of course at anything near max load I'd add some heat sinks, but if the original motor had a 1 amp load and the new one is 2 or 3 amps you should be just fine without any changes.  

If, on the other hand, the smaller engines used something like an L298 H-Bridge driver, that chip is only rated for 2 amps.  If you could post a picture of the LC boards you have it would help in determining what you can run with them.  

JGL

P.S. Here I'm assuming from the post that you have junked engines and good electronics to swap to another engine.  While it would still work just fine I can't see this being very cost effective for others looking to put a remote control on a conventional engine.  That can be done many other ways with much less cost.  

Sort of on another point from my first post here, and to let the cat out of the bag before I've finished working the kinks out of it;  Lately I've been working on a cruise-control mod for LionChief engines.  To make things easy to install and not require any more work than to un-plug a couple plugs and re-plug them elsewhere, I've decided to build a new motor driver in my design.  

The point here would be, if the boards you have, in fact, will not handle the current of the motor(s) in the conventional engines, it would only cost a couple bucks to buy the parts needed to make a higher current motor driver for the LC electronics.  

JGL

Since one can buy an R/C car with transmitter/receiver/speed control for well under $100, I'd be surprised if one couldn't come up with a cost-effective, profitable LionChief "work-alike" for considerably less than that.  Assuming there is enough of a market. 

Remember, the bridge rectifier is frequently the long pole in the tent for current carrying capability.  In most higher power designs the bridge rectifier is the component that requires a heatsink to properly function.

JohnGaltLine posted:

Sort of on another point from my first post here, and to let the cat out of the bag before I've finished working the kinks out of it;  Lately I've been working on a cruise-control mod for LionChief engines.  To make things easy to install and not require any more work than to un-plug a couple plugs and re-plug them elsewhere, I've decided to build a new motor driver in my design.

That would be really cool, I suspect that would be a good seller!   Looking forward to hearing more details.

GRJ, good point, and one that didn't occur to me.  The bridge in my Polar Express is rated for 'only' 4 amps.  I suppose one could pretty easily unsolder it and install one with a higher rating if needed, but then I's worry about the traces on the PCB being able to hold up to the current.  On the polar express board, the bridge is right on the end of the board and if the other boards for smaller engines are similar one might be able to add a heat sink without much trouble.   The other option would be to build a separate power supply and driver as I suggested above.  

As for the cruise, I'm still tinkering with timings and the PID settings to make things more stable.  I'm 99% stable at this point, but once every minute or two I'm losing stability for a fraction of a second, and want to see if I can work that out.   Using an optical tach would probably solve things, but I went with back EMF to make it more universal... and easier to install.  As for being a good seller, That will depend a lot on the price point.  After all if you can do an ERR cruise for the same money or less you would get way more functionality out of that.  

Landsteiner posted:

Since one can buy an R/C car with transmitter/receiver/speed control for well under $100, I'd be surprised if one couldn't come up with a cost-effective, profitable LionChief "work-alike" for considerably less than that.  Assuming there is enough of a market. 

As of right now you can make a home-brew work-alike to lionchief's electronics package for around $20 or so, and mostly with ready-made modules.  ac-dc buck converter, a pair of Arduino pro-mini's, nRF24L01+'s, Mp3 module, H-Bridge module, some buttons, a pot, battery holder and a little box for the remote.  

JGL

Marty, would you care to elaborate?  What is the failure point of these engines you've worked on, and why would it not be a good idea in particular?  

I can't think of any reason not to give it a try (assuming the motor current, etc, checks out), for someone that has the board sitting there with a mechanically non-functioning engine.  

JGL

JohnGaltLine posted:

GRJ, good point, and one that didn't occur to me.  The bridge in my Polar Express is rated for 'only' 4 amps.

At 4 amps, that bridge would be dissipating over 5 watts, that will make a package that size pretty toasty. I'd be concerned about more than an amp or perhaps an amp and a half with no heatsink.

John, I am a Lionel Tech and may have worked on a few more of those than most.  I think you should give it a try.  Please let members know how it worked out.  Hopefully I can learn something.  I will delete my above post as I do not want to discourage people from trying things.

I am very interested how you would work the flywheel.

Marty, it's not an LC+, so he doesn't have any issue that I can see.

I am doing so much on LC+, I overlooked the LC.  Sorry about that.

No problem Marty, but it is distressing that you're "doing so much LC+", that doesn't bode well for that product line!

John, the large number of issues are caused by the owner/operator not reading the book.  They overfill the smoke unit.  The fiberglass wicking acts as a sponge and when fully saturated it acts as a cooling device on the heating element.  The heater can not make smoke.  People keep throwing fluid at the smoke unit hoping for smoke.   The fix is to throw away the fiberglass pad and use the 8 inch rope wicking (691SMKP008) shreded.  These locomotives smoke great in remote mode.  

Any locomotive that is produced in large numbers will have situations.  The engines are well built and easy to work on.  I will end it at that.  I do not own any LC+ but do like it and enjoy operating it.