Pacific with MTH smoke unit.

[Jerry B44]

Ran my Pacific that I put a MTH smoke unit into. Did reduce the voltage some, but may still be too high. Sure goes through the fluid, but looks nice.  I use coal scented Mega-Steam smoke fluid.   www.megasteam.com  Seems to work real good, they have lots of smells. No, I  have no affiliation with them.

 

[enginear joe]

 Great work. I like the MTH smoke units the best.

[benshell]

That's awesome Jerry! Do you have any details about your install?

 

I'm trying to do the same thing with my Aristo-Craft Mallet. I have the smoke unit mounted in the locomotive and hooked up to a QSI Titan, and it works great for about a minute until it draws too much current. I've seen the heating element alone draw up to 4 amps before the decoder resets! (at 8 volts for the heating element)

[Jerry B44]

Yeah, it sucks the power for sure. I have it hooked to the smoke unit wires in the Pacific, but stepped down the voltage some with a unit David Bodnar suggested. You can contact him at:   davebodnar (at sign) verizon.net   It has some wire round coil on it and some capacitors. Seems they were an ebay item, something he recommended anyway. You can adjust the voltage some, mine's at about 7 volts, as I recall, but uses up the smoke fluid pretty fast.

[Jim Miller]

Try one of these to step down voltage...............Jim

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LM2596-DC-4-5-28V-to-1-3-25V-12v-Step-Down-Voltage-Regulator-LED-Voltmeter-B-0-/271289760299?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f2a213a2b

[markoles]

We were just discussing the potential to use the MTH smoke units in place of the aristo sd-45 smoke unit.

 

I wonder if I could fit an MTH unit in the boiler of an LGB mikado.  I belive the LGB board outputs 5v for their smoke unit, but it is a tight fit in there. 

[Jerry B44]

That looks good Jim, I ordered a couple of them.  Markoles the MTH units are pretty big. Maybe a O scale size would work?  Seems to be hard to find any of them though, especcially Gauge 1 units. They are making some stuff again, not sure when it is due out, so may have some parts again.

[benshell]

Thanks for the details Jerry.

 

That step down circuit isn't going to be able to handle the current of an MTH smoke unit, at least not from what I've seen. I have used a similar board (from eBay) in other circuits though, so it'll be great to have them on hand.

 

As for the smoke, since I'm using a QSI decoder I can set the output voltage to be anything I want... I like the increased output of a higher voltage, but for reliable ongoing use without melting something I may have to step it down to more like 5 to 7 volts. I have a 10 amp QSI Titan on order, so once I get that I'll resume testing.