Micro Ace lighting questions

[berbeno21]

Hi everyone,

 

I have a Micro Ace train, A-5610 Hatsukari, that I bought second hand. After some cleaning I managed to make it run smooth, light up, and so I enjoy it a lot. At first, I used a Kato standard sx, and everything was smooth. But then I moved to Tomix controllers, such as TCS Power Unit N-DU101 or TCS N1001CL. I like those controllers because they make the lights brighter. 

But when I use my Hatsukari, it goes berserk. There is literally only two modes, full speed or off. It's impossible to crawl or to have a smooth start or stop at stations.  So, my question is, is it an incompatibility between Micro Ace lighting tech or is something off on the board? 

I know it's the light board because I can use any other motor unit with it and it goes full speed. 

So what is drawing that much current? Is it the ceramic condenser? Is there any way to check if there is a faulty componant?

 

Thank you for reading and I hope someone has an answer to my questions.

 

[disturbman]

5 hours ago, berbeno21 said:

I know it's the light board because I can use any other motor unit with it and it goes full speed. 

 

I'm not sure I understand what you eliminated here. What are these "it" in your second sentence? The train, the lightboard, the controller?

Did you try running the train without the light boards to make sure they are at fault?

[berbeno21]

The motor unit only is moving without problem. It is only when I put the  light unit on the same track as a power unit that any motor unit gets a huge boost

[disturbman]

Thanks. That makes more sense, and that's unfortunate. It it was the more unit, I could have recommended you to acquire a new powered chassis, but the light units are not available as spares and you indeed will need to identify which component to change.

I personally never had any issues running MA older sets with my Tomix N1001CL, but I keep myself to sets older than 2005/2006 when MA changed their motors and light boards. I could also be that the older boards are not PWM-friendly. Tomix used to mention when their trains are CL compatible.

[brill27mcb]

But the Kato SX power pack is also PWM, isn't it? Wouldn't it then have the same problem as a Tomix CL unit? (The older Kato S is a simple rectified, unfiltered full-wave DC output.) I do not know how the Kato and Tomix pulse frequencies compare...

 

I, too, think the problem might lie with a capacitor/condenser messing with the PWM pulses by filling in the gaps between pulses, making the motor run faster by seeing a higher average voltage.

 

Rich K.