Terry, it would be easy to program a microcontroller to supply pulses for the fan but I am not sure that you would get the desired effect. I think a piston or bellows is more likely to give what you want.
I may still have an aristo smoke unit with a fan. If so I can experiment a bit.
Dave
I think a piston would take the place of the fan. The fan is there to push smoke out the stack, The piston would do the same thing. The more complicated you get, the more problems you encounter. Of course, the piston mechanism would have to have mechanical actuation, so that would entail a direct hook-up to the motor or the valve gearing, etc.
David Bodnar said:
Terry, it would be easy to program a microcontroller to supply pulses for the fan but I am not sure that you would get the desired effect. I think a piston or bellows is more likely to give what you want. I may still have an aristo smoke unit with a fan. If so I can experiment a bit. Dave
David
The fan method is pretty well how it’s handled using the various DCC decoders.
Hello All
Lionel “O” gauge steam locos have been pulsing smoke since 1940,s
they use a simple piston loosely linked to the valve gear.
Get ahold of an old Hudson loco to get the parts.
BTW it only pulses once per revolution but still looks OK.
Bill Ewing
The USA fan works great when I manually pulse the fan. Again, building a piston system is not what I want to do. Carving through a frame attaching gears, rods pullies to a piston system attached to a smoke unit seems awfully counter productive for me.
USA trains docksider makes a nice piston system for the steam effect and i looked at using that for about 2 seconds. To me the work involved doesen’t equal the fun I would get out of it.
Terry
I agree with Bill. The Lionel set up would be the simplest as far as the electrical portion goes. the hardest part of it would be to rig up the piston to the drive of a g scal loco.
Ten years ago, there was a product called “Puff ‘n’ Chuff.” The guy who made them went to work for Lionel, and his company was bought up by Lionel, Inc. You might look in that direction for ideas.
http://www.largescalecentral.com/forums/topic/4697/puff-n-chuff-from-tas
Also, the piston and linkage would be subject to wear.
On pulsing the fan, I think the cool thing would be to use dynamic braking between pulses, that should really make the pulses as distinct as a piston.
Greg
Have a look here for interest/ideas.
http://www.scale4x4rc.org/forums/showthread.php?t=25024&highlight=smoke+generator
One of the mentioned Heng Long units has a piston arrangement. Must admit I have never got it to work properly.
…and amazingly…at the bottom of the posts is a reference to George Shreyer’s pages!
I have heng long smokers in my tanks. They are ok at best. Not bad for tanks that don’t put out large volumes of smoke like a loco. The heating element and piston work off the same power source. The downside is they are very, very loud.
Terry
Didn’t the old Arisotcraft Pacific channel the smoke through one of the pistons to make it puff ?
My pal here in Florida didn’t like the system in his Bachmann C-19 so he made his own. It works off the chuff sensor in parallel with the sound system. He is waiting for Bob to approve his application for LSC. In the meantime, his little piece of electronics is described over on that other site:
Pete Thornton said:
Didn’t the old Arisotcraft Pacific channel the smoke through one of the pistons to make it puff ?
They did route some of the “steam” down to the pistons for some effect or another. But in service all it did was dribble the smoke fluid out of the pistons.
I have also used Heng Long smoke units. Very inexpensive on Evilbay, about $8-10.00. Here are some examples of what I ahve done. I rund battery power. I cannot say how much time the smoke unit draw decreases my running time on one charge of the 14.8 volt Li-on battery, but I know that I run out of steam before any given battery does.
This last example is a USA smoke unit powered by a separate li-on battery.
^^^^^^^^^^
And that is what I am looking to try and do.
Terry
Greg, that looks great. How will it perform at higher speeds? I mean, I know the real thing puts out almost a steady stream of smoke at high speed, so I suspect your smoke unit will do the same.
Greg Elmassian said:
USAT smoke unit running from QSI…
puts out plenty of smoke
Greg
Greg, that thing sound like it has a severe case of asthma. Perhaps you should consider having it give up smoking?
did not tune the sound unit… was just testing the “direct smoke” setup from QSI.
I do tweak the “voltage” setting to the heater to keep it from overheating… the metal bodied USAT seem sturdier to me than the Aristo units.
I also have several MTH units, and may do the dual heater setups that Dan and Raymond Manley do… but you are adding more heat with 2 units, but 2 heaters/wicks should operate at lower heat than one for the same smoke output. Eventually the wick gets gunked up and does not draw fluid as well, and you should replace the wicks.
I don’t run the smoke continuously for hours on end, and I pay attention to running out of fluid.
for the price, the USAT are good, just wish they had a larger reservoir…
Greg
p.s. when you have the unit necked down to a smoke stack, it’s even more impressive…
Greg, what voltage are you using for the wick and what voltage for the fan?
Terry