It’s private. You need to change the setting.
This unit smokes like nothing I have ever seen before and the plum of smoke is about as real as you get in a model. The biggest draw back is it will drain a 5200mah 14.8V LiIo battery in no time at all. Without the smoker I normally get about 7 to 8 hours, with the smoke unit I get about 1 hour. On open house days I will turn it on more for show and leave it off most of the time. Word of caution, if you fire this smoker up in your home you will fill a room with smoke in seconds and bring the wrath of your wife down on you in a hurry.
Is it fan driven? If so, you could put 4 magnets on one of the drivers, with a reed switch in the power circuit to the fan, and have a chuff synched with the smoke. That should also dramatically increase your battery life.
Yes it is fan driven and I do have the 4 magnets on a driver. Problem is my old G2 decoder doesn’t like the load of the smoke unit and shuts down, I thought for sure the decoder blew up but it just protected itself before that happened so the only way to keep the system happy is to run the smoke direct off the battery leads. Believe me, I would love the chuff sync with smoke, I just don’t know enough about the system to wire it without burning something up.
Ok, just use the same magnets, but put in a second reed switch in the power circuit between the battery and the fan, operated by those magnets. It sounds as though you have ignored the G2 as far as the smoke system goes, anyway, so this won’t affect that decoder.
There used to be a system that you could buy called the Puff ‘n’ Chuff, but that was absorbed by Lionel Corp, and is no longer available new. That is all it was, though, reed and magnet operated fan driven smoke. It looked great.
There should be some electrical guru in your club who can help you out. You’re not too far from Chino, give Jonathan Bliese at Electric Steam Works a call.
Bob
What brand or who makes this smoke generator ?
http://www.harbormodels.com/site08/main_pages/smoker.htm
Keep in mind that this is a large unit and needs a large space to install it. It fit in my Accucraft K-36 with a little room to spare but not much. I did see the video of someone putting this in a USA Trains Hudson
The current the fan draws is pretty high, and you need a high current reed switch to control it. You should also use a diode to reduce arcing in the reed switch (across the fan motor).
There have been various reviews and installations of this unit, thought a few were here.
Greg
Yes the current draw is real high so for now I just plan on operating it on full power direct off the battery and forget about the reed switch. At 14.8v it burns up the smoke fluid much faster than normal and in two days of testing I have completely used up a 4oz bottle of fluid but watching that huge plume of smoke worth it. If I plan on operating for a long period of time I will leave the smoke unplugged and just plug it in for a short time to show off the smoke.
There might be a way to control this a bit, look on ebay for a DC to DC converter. If you can find one with a 12 output, and is a “switcher”, it would give you 12 volts with very little loss.
That would cut the operating voltage back to the recommended level and should give you a lot longer run time.
I’ve seen these on ebay, a small module…
Regards, Greg
My next door neighbour has an old Francis-Barnett two-stroke motorcycle that smokes just like that.
tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
Meanwell makes DC to DC converters, here’s one carried by mouser, and you can probably find it cheaper… will convert your input voltage to a constant 12v output, will handle 2.5 amps and you can get it in 77 to 82% efficiency.
I would guess that you are losing a lot of run time because you are drawing a lot more current than the system would if it was operated on 12 volts. Also, since you would be getting a constant 12v, the operation should be more consistent.
http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/260/PSD-30-spec-34930.pdf
Regards, Greg
Just learned the hard way not to put more than 12v on this unit. First clue was the flames coming out of the stack. Not much left of the smoke unit but on the bright side my K-36 had no damage and everything still operates fine, just a little touch up with my airbrush around the stack. Harbor Models said I should have no problems running the unit on higher voltages but after talking to him today he doesn’t recall saying that. I’m just glad my model is unharmed but my days of trying smoke are over.
So no smoke any more just because of that?
Wow, great smoke! Too bad though about the short run times and fire risk. In a plastic loco that would be the end of it.
Greg Elmassian said:
So no smoke any more just because of that?
I came to close to losing a $5000 model to ever risk that again, if this was a Bachmann K-27 it would have been a complete loss. The only reason the damage was minor was because I shut it down seconds after seeing the flames and it was right in front of me at the time. If it was on the back side of the railroad who knows what would be left.
I’ve seen a few smoke units overheat. I guess there is a lesson to be learned here.
Sorry it was a bad experience.
Glad there was no major damage.
Greg