David Posted March 17, 2010 Share Posted March 17, 2010 Putting a coreless motor on a DCC layout (without a decoder to prevent it from spinning) is a bad thing - coreless motors spin up faster and lack a natural heat sink. This means a constant AC signal like DCC (or running it at full throttle on DC for too long) will push the motor to overheat and die. Kato's 9600 is an example of a locomotive that makes use of a coreless motor. (see warning http://www.katomodels.com/hobby/dcc/digitrax_info.shtml) Do the same issues apply when using a Tomix CL controller, since as I understand it they work by adding an AC signal to keep the lights powered at a level set by the user? Will turning the CL feature down to zero (or at least keep it below the equivalent of 20% throttle) be enough to prevent damage, or would the AC back and forth pull on the motor (again, coreless motors are able to start spinning in response to voltage changes much faster) be enough to harm it? Perhaps a good question is if setting the CL dial to zero on something like the N-1000-CL controller will render it identical to a regular DC controller. Link to comment
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