E6 Shinkansen much slower than E5?

[gavino200]

My E6 Shinkansen runs a lot slower than either my E5 or my Type 500. Max speed of the E6 is roughly half that of the other two. Is that normal, or should I look into it? I had expected them to be similar as they are meant to run together.

[Martijn Meerts]

My Kato E5 and E6 run at pretty much the same speed. The difference is so minimal that they can easily run as a consist even without speed matching the 2. So, if you have the Kato versions of the trains, something might not be entirely right.

[gavino200]

My Kato E5 and E6 run at pretty much the same speed. The difference is so minimal that they can easily run as a consist even without speed matching the 2. So, if you have the Kato versions of the trains, something might not be entirely right.

Yes. They're all Kato. I guess I'll open it up and have a look. When it arrived first it didn't run. The driveshaft had been dislodged in the mail. I'll fiddle with it and see if I can improve it. 

 

Thanks.

[HantuBlauLOL]

brand new? try running it for a hour..

 

also does it produce any weird sound?

[gavino200]

So it doesn't seem to be the shaft. No amount of jiggling seems to improve it. It's also not the decoder settings. No limit set.

 

Other than a dud motor what else could be causing it to run slow. It's relatively new. Maybe two months. It never ran any faster than it does now. 

 

The E5 and E6 are almost perfectly speed matched with the E6 at 99 and the E5 at 43.

 

I don't mind getting a new motor for it. But I'd hate to go to all that trouble and the wait, only to find it was still slow.

 

The motor 'sounds' fine btw
 

Edited February 21, 2017 by gavino200

[cteno4]

How about the gears in the trucks? These can suck up cat fir and puzz at times and really slow things down. Usually it does make a grinding noise with this

 

Did you check that either end of the drive shaft universal joints did not get stripped? This happens sometimes and then you are only getting one truck actually powered. Checking by applying power to the wheels does not alway work as there may be enough left on the universal joint to catch in the socket when little resistance on the wheels (i.e. Free spinning upside down) but on the track it then is loose and free spinning in the joint cup. Only way to really tell is pull it all apart and test the drive shaft universal joints in each appropriate socket joint with your finger to see if it engages or slips.

 

Not usually notice that great of a difference in speeds. Slowing down is usually an indicator to me things can be dirty and need cleaning and lubing.

 

Jeff

[gavino200]

How about the gears in the trucks? These can suck up cat fir and puzz at times and really slow things down. Usually it does make a grinding noise with this

 

Did you check that either end of the drive shaft universal joints did not get stripped? This happens sometimes and then you are only getting one truck actually powered. Checking by applying power to the wheels does not alway work as there may be enough left on the universal joint to catch in the socket when little resistance on the wheels (i.e. Free spinning upside down) but on the track it then is loose and free spinning in the joint cup. Only way to really tell is pull it all apart and test the drive shaft universal joints in each appropriate socket joint with your finger to see if it engages or slips.

 

Not usually notice that great of a difference in speeds. Slowing down is usually an indicator to me things can be dirty and need cleaning and lubing.

 

Jeff

 

 

The gears are pristine. This thing is brand new. I checked anyway. Clean as a whistle. The shaft joints don't look stripped, and they don't seem to slip against resistance.

 

I wonder if it's a problem with the EM13 or insufficient electrical contact. I'll try it tomorrow with a borrowed chip.

[inobu]

Program CV 8 to 8 to reset to factory default.

 

Test the train again. 

Default address 3 

 

If the train is still slow remove the decoder and run it straight dc

 

If the train is yet again slow explore the motor. 

 

Inobu

[HantuBlauLOL]

does the motor shaft turns freely?

[gavino200]

Some updates and one major clarification.

 

First the clarification. I currently have no way to measure the absolute speed of the trains, except with a stopwatch, tape measure, and calculator (which I haven't done). So when I said 'half as fast' I'm saying that they're at the same speed when the E5 is set to half the 'speed' of the E6 on the controller. However, I don't think train speed varies linearly with cab speed setting. So that is misleading. 

 

Updates. I tried tinning the electrode 'legs' on the EM13. No change.

 

I took the motor unit to my local train guy (who is very good) and we tinkered with it. Mostly cleaning and bending the copper contact strips, and adding a tiny amount of dielectric grease to the copper strip. I also put in a new EM13. 

 

It runs faster for sure. Fast enough to allow me to couple the two shinkansens, which is good enough for now.

 

They aren't however, exactly the same speed. The E5 is still faster by a decent bit. The E6 at full 'speed setting' (99) equals the E5 running at cab speed setting of 57. 

 

An improvement and good enough for now. I may invest in one of those train speed measuring gadgets and compare speed data before I go at this again. For the time being I've done everything I can think of.

Edited February 21, 2017 by gavino200

[cteno4]

Gavin,

 

Simplest way is just time a loop.

 

Sure they are on the same speed curve?

 

Jeff

[nah00]

I had a similar problem with my Kato E-6. Ran ok out of the box for about 5 minutes but then it started struggling and getting more sluggish to the point it was crawling at near redline. Took apart the motor car, cleaned out everything, put it back on the track and it was still going slow but after a couple of laps the speed started to pick up until it was back to normal after about 10 minutes. Never had the problem since. I don't run DCC on my layout but it sounds more like a motor issue. 

[gavino200]

Gavin,

 

Simplest way is just time a loop.

 

Sure they are on the same speed curve?

 

Jeff

 

They're very close. E6 is 23.06, E5 is 22.5.

 

I haven't adjusted speed curves. That's the screen in JMRI that looks like a graphic equalizer, right? You you now of a good 101 level guide to adjusting speed curves?

[kvp]

 

 

You you now of a good 101 level guide to adjusting speed curves?

It depends on what you want to achive. You can calculate the irl top speed scaled down to your scale and calibrate the full speed setting to be this value and set everything else to be more or less linear. If you want to match two motors, then first try to get the top speeds to match, adjusting the faster unit down to the slower. Then adjust each middle step in each decoder to matching values. Usually the tables are only 14 to 16 entries long and once the top and the slowest speeds are matching, you can set the rest linearly.

 

It's a good idea to do these with acceleration and braking delay set to 0, then adjust these values to matching values, so they speed up and slow down in synchron. This is usually easier to do if you have the same decoder type in both units.

[gavino200]

Thanks. Yes, I want to match them, to run together.

 

Whats 'irl' top speed?

[katoftw]

IRL = in real life

[medusa]

Probably this is not of relevance since I only drive analog (DC). But since my H5 arrived yesterday I made a quick test with both E6 and H5 motor cars. I have not yet run the complete E6/H5 sets together.

Both motor cars run approximately the same speed. Approximately reads, the motor car closer to the electrical feed is somewhat faster (not much but noticeable) no matter if it is E6 or H5. Obviously the voltage drops behind the first electrical load (aka motor)somewhat. Thin oxide layers on bronze contacts in the cars may worsen this substatially. Digital electronics may be especially unhappy about oxides because sometimes it can have diode-like properties.

 

Usually I give new trains a "burn in" of approximately one hour. Let it run at various speeds, both directions, and turn it completely around so the cars see both left and right turns during their initial runs. This cleans contacts and gives the gears their finish.

Besides of that I do not care so much of analog DC motor cars running not the same speed. Made lots of experiments with my old Minitrix locos. The faster loco partially pulls the slower one, removing part of mechanical load from its motor so it can spin faster. In turn the faster motor gets additional load thus spins slower until both meet at same speed.

You can easily verify that by carefully pushing slightly a slow driving loco. You will notice that the motor spins faster as soon as your hand starts to push (thus taking some of the mechanical load). Note I tried that only on analog DC, guess it will not work for digital trains.

[cteno4]

They're very close. E6 is 23.06, E5 is 22.5.

 

I haven't adjusted speed curves. That's the screen in JMRI that looks like a graphic equalizer, right? You you now of a good 101 level guide to adjusting speed curves?

Well that's pretty close, is that at the same throttle setting?

 

No I'm not a big doc guy only have been poking at it for strange things. The curve is the thing you use to speed match the motor at different throttle settings. It's a lot of timing a loop and then adjusting, repeat until all evened out. One of the great things with Dcc.

 

Jeff

[gavino200]

Nope. That was at totally different settings 99 vs. 57. 

 

But....

 

Based on the advice above I had at it again. It took me a while to be confident that I was doing the right thing. But I managed to synchronize IRL train speeds for the top speed settings. With both throttles set at 99 the trains gap by no more than a couple of centimeters around the whole loop. It took a LOT of adjustments. Also, I haven't managed to get the on-main programming to work, so I had to put the E5 on the programming track every time. I'm done for now. Will pick it up again tomorrow. 

 

One thing I still don't understand. Full speed sync was fairly easy as I only had to place both throttles on full, then adjust one speed curve max, then test them. However, I'm not sure what throttle settings correspond to the different x axis bars on the JMRI speed curve chart. ie. If I wanted to adjust the middle column of the JMRI chart for the E5 to give it the same IRL speed as the E6 what setting would I turn both throttles to?

Edited February 22, 2017 by gavino200

[gavino200]

Eh, Duh! I just realized there are 28 of those bars. So all I have to do is work out how to change my Digitrax cab speed scale from 0-99 to 0-28 and they should match exactly. 

 

Then I could theoretically repeat the process for each of the 28, or I could check the boxes for a few representative steps and have JMRI join the dots.

 

Right?

[gavino200]

I managed to speed match the two motor units and consist them. I just used max and 50% points. That was close enough.

 

I was also able to get on main programming to work. It turns out I had the preferences in JMRI set to stand alone PR3 instead of DCS100.

 

It's a little annoying that Digitrax only allows you to use speed percentages in it's throttles. It would be easier to set speed curves if you could input speed settings in 28 steps. Of course I can just calculate each step 0-28 as a percentage of 28, but i need to find out if the "28 step" mode actually has 28 steps. Apparently the 128 mode only actually has 126 steps. I realize the difference is fairly negligible, however, if I'm going to go to that much trouble, I might as well be precise.