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Voltage Regulator

3669 Views 24 Replies 9 Participants Last post by  steam5
I feel certain this request for information has been posted before, but thus far I've not uncovered a particular post.

I would like to know what is a reliable voltage regulator for battery operation. For example, I have two battery packs that each put out 9.8 volts. I would like to connect them together, yet have the voltage output to my locomotives maintained at 12 volts for motors, lighting, decoders, etc.

Any and all help will be appreciated. Thanks . . . .

Ken
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The Airwire PWM freq is pretty low, many people report buzzing noise from motor. Not well liked by coreles motors.

By the way, unless I missed it in someone's post, using a 7812 1 amp regulator to run motors ... ahh... well... will melt down... unless your motors and lights are under one amp, which they aren't ... you have to forget the series regulator idea, unless it's just for a few lights... you need a heat sink and a fan to get an amp from the 7812 inside a closed loco...

Regards, Greg
Hi Greg - So far, no buzzing noise from the motor when batter powered through the AirWire. This if with some basic "test stand" stuff though. I am hoping it will continue that way.

Thanks for the heads up on regulator. With a change in plans as to motor selection, I don't think I will need the regulator. But regardless, it's always good to learn something new. Thanks so much . . . . Ken
Brushless and coreless motors are different.

A coreless motor has brushes and its armature only consists of a specific pattern of windings with no iron core (hence coreless). This makes the motor extremely efficient and allows them to make them extremely small (most pager motors and smaller) Cooling becomes an issue as there's less iron in the motor. They also have absolutely no cogging, which is neat (cogging is basically the magnetic resistance when no powere is applied).

Brushless motors are kinda the reverse of a standard motor where the elctromagnets are on the outside and the permanant magnet is on the inside on the armature, thus you dont need brushes to contact the inner windings of the electromagnet. Since there are several electromagnets on the outside, they need to be fired in an exact sequence to get the armature to spin, so theres usually more then 2 simple wires and are connected to a specifc microcontroller to coordinate it (most even have feed back for the timing).

The coreless motors are really neat since they have no cogging. I have a 1/32nd scale GP9 Wada Works live diesel-electric loco and each axle is powered directly by a 12 volt faulhabor coreless motor geared 1 to 8 directly to the axle, so the loco rolls totally freely if its not powered or you go into neutral like a real loco.

-Ray
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A coreless motor is not a brushless motor.

A coreless motor has no armature core and a brushless motor does not have a brush and commutator arrangement.

An incompatible PWM motor control will over heat a coreless motor causing damage, this is due to not having a core to dissipate heat to.

Hope this helps to clear a few things up.
Ray, you and I must have been typing at the same time!
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