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 motor 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 younger 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.

Edited Sunday at 02:35 PM by disturbman

[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.

[berbeno21]

Thanks for both answers. 

 

So, what can I do? 

can I try desoldering the condenser? 

the ceramic looking one?

I mean, worst case scenario nothing lights up or it flickers a lot right?

[disturbman]

On 4/5/2025 at 5:10 AM, brill27mcb said:

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...

Me neither. I do remember reading somewhere here that the Kato and Tomix PWM were different, and I have a tendency to believe that. Some users have reported they had noticed slightly differences in response from their trains depending on which brand of controllers they used, or that train would buzz with one controller but not the other.

Maybe @inobu or other posters with a stronger knowledge of electronics can provide guidance to @berbeno21? My Japanese-fu is failing to produce any results so far, though I'm sure he must not be the first to encounter such an issue.

[cteno4]

My first thought was the tiny cap was filling in the high frequency cl pulses as its not big enough to i think to fill in the engine pwm at lower frequency [ie much bigger gaps], but the cl is always on if its turned up even when the throttle is 0. This is an odd one. Big difference is going to be the cl with the tomix controller.

 

have you tried this with cl on and off?

 

jeff

[inobu]

Tomix places an High Frequency AC current on the rails to operate its lighting boards. Chances are the

lighting boards are DC only on the passenger car. Being that DC lighting boards are designed to operate in both polarities it could be

acting as a rectifier towards the Constant Lighting AC. That's where the added power is coming from.

 

The light board in the image looks like its drawing a lot of current. The wire is melting the plastic

so one could conclude that the source of the power "Boost".

 

Inobu 

 

 

[cteno4]

Thanks inobu, i forgot the cl is ac and that does make sense the fully rectified AC cl current is now being fed into the system as DC current and thus turning the motor full on.

 

Its odd this has not turned up before as far as i can remember on the forums with MA trains on tomix cl power packs, i wonder if this is an odd board design with a flaw.

 

jeff

[inobu]

59 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Thanks inobu, i forgot the cl is ac and that does make sense the fully rectified AC cl current is now being fed into the system as DC current and thus turning the motor full on.

 

Its odd this has not turned up before as far as i can remember on the forums with MA trains on tomix cl power packs, i wonder if this is an odd board design with a flaw.

 

jeff

The LED board looks somewhat modified so I'm guessing its a lucky strike......

 

Inobu

[cteno4]

I was wondering that too as ive not seen wires like that on lighting boards and some of the solder joints funky and flux on the board, so I think you are spot on that this is a one off causing the issue.

 

Ive not run all my micro ace on cl transformers but a good smattering and never seen anything like his myself.

 

jeff

[disturbman]

12 minutes ago, inobu said:

The LED board looks somewhat modified so I'm guessing its a lucky strike......

 

Totally. As far as I know, pre-2005 MA boards are normally all bulbs and not LED and the set in question is from 2001 iirc. I wanted to mention that earlier but forgot.
 

8 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

I've not run all my micro ace on cl transformers but a good smattering and never seen anything like his myself.

 

Same. All my post-2005 MA run without issues on my Tomix N-1001-CL.

[cteno4]

Ok makes total sense now it was a bulb to led hack on the board that is not cl friendly. 

 

Its hard to tell if the cap was part of the circuit or not as its raised up and looks to have been resoldered but there was a component box outlined there. If you definitely want to keep running with the cl controller then you could try desoldering the capacitor and see what that does. But to hard to ell the circuit here from the jumble of stuff and not seeing the tracings. Pretty sure its a rectifier on the back side.

 

Do both of the end light boards do this? If ones does and the other doesn’t you might compare them to see if something is off on the one that gives the behavior or replace parts to see if one component is shorted out. 

 

Jeff

[berbeno21]

Thank you everyone, 

the led with the rectifier is indeed always on, it's the light for the headmark. And both head cars have this effect..

 

 

Edited Sunday at 11:49 PM by berbeno21

[brill27mcb]

Jeff, I do not believe in present Tomix power supplies that there is a separate PWM for constant lighting and another for the motor. The whole power supply output is a single set of pulses, with no steady DC component, no overlays, etc. The "CL" constant lighting feature is merely the ability to set a minimum pulse length level (higher than a zero volt "off") where the lights respond to the pulses but the motor does not yet rotate.

 

Also, PWM is not really AC. "Alternating" current means it alternates between positive and negative, whereas DC pulses are simply there or not there.

 

I do agree that the light board capacitance could be sufficient to "fill in" voltage between high frequency PWM pulses better than between longer-spaced,  less frequent pulses.

 

Rich K.

[cteno4]

Bill,

 

This two signals, dc pwm for motor and high frequency ac [i mis forgot as another overlaid pwm], i had from a very old post from Capt Oblivious on trying to figure out the switch for cl on the tomix cleaner car and exactly what the cl power is. I never used cl much at all so never have bothered to pay that much attention to it. It made sense you can pull the hi freq ac out for lighting use. But what doesn’t make sense is i sort of have memory of if you turn the cl up high enough with the throttle all the way down you could get the motor to creep like it was starting to get enough pwm signal to turn over the motor some. Then going back to your later post on CL power it makes sense the cl is high frequency pm with the throttle is just increasing the constant base line dc voltage. But you are now saying that the motor control is pwm as well. 

 

But does make sense that a larger cap could give enough pwm fill in to deliver a more steady high voltage back into the motor.

 

I would love to still have my tomix cl throttle to play with no that i ahve a little oscilloscope to put on it and observe as it should be easy to see.

 

@berbeno21 how much do you have to turn up the throttle before it takes off full speed?

 

Also have you turned the cl all the way down and tried it that way?

 

also this cl behavior with the lightboard occurs in both directions of power?

 

jeff