TGW Snow plow

[westfalen]

My TGW snow plow arrived the other day. There is room for one of the smaller decoders but before I install one I was wondering if one of the learned JNS members would be able to translate the box in the upper right of the instruction sheet, DCC is mentioned but that's about all I can figure out.

 

[VJM]

Basically the last line in that box says that it is not suitable for DCC. 

[CaptOblivious]

I wonder why? I can't imagine the reason. Even if it used a somewhat exotic (by Japanese and North American standards) motor, many European decoders are designed to work with such...

[Martijn Meerts]

Maybe not suitable for a drop-in decoder.. As long as they use a standard 12V motor rather than one of those tiny things Kato uses in their portrams, there's not reason this thing shouldn't be suitable for DCC.

[westfalen]

Maybe not suitable for a drop-in decoder.. As long as they use a standard 12V motor rather than one of those tiny things Kato uses in their portrams, there's not reason this thing shouldn't be suitable for DCC.

At a quick glance the motor does look like the ones in the portrams which is what I suspected. Limiting the maximum voltage from the decoder should work. I was hoping all that writing in the box might have conveyed some useful information.

[westfalen]

I've finally had a few spare minutes to sit down and pull it apart and the motor is connected directly to the track without any visible resistors or other circuitry so it should be able to have a decoder wired up to it.

 

Descriptions of a loco's DCC compatability can be vague even in English.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Looks like a fairly standard 12 volt mini motor that World Kougei uses a lot as well..

[KenS]

If that's a coreless motor (and really tiny motors may be coreless), you need to exercise some care converting it to DCC.  Coreless motors can overheat on low-frequency PWM. It's generally considered okay to use a "supersonic" decoder, although that usually means 16 kHz, and some coreless designs recommend a higher frequency. I'll note that I've never converted one, so I don't have any personal experience.

 

I've also read that such models shouldn't be used without a decoder on a DCC system that supports running a DC train, as that's essentially doing low-frequency PWM (called "zero stretching").