Hi Guys & Girls, A little help on this Where would you site this item? I have had three differant answers from Aristo-craft. My reason for buying this is that my Gauge master power supply may not stop spikes so I was going to put this unit at the back of it and before my T/E (not the new one) so as to protect loco motors. I am waiting for A/C to tell me the value of the diodes/resister sthat are on the board. My Bachmann Consolidations pull a few amps and I do not want to burn this new unit out.
Any advice wiil be well received, I am based in England
I am a little confused about what it is that you are trying to do? Are you using the T1 open chassis transformer then using the bridge rectifier board to provide DC to the train engineer?. Unlike the US system the UK National Grid is a very clean supply. Using a simple inline suppressor from the 13A mains plug to your transformer would be all you would need. If you are really concerned about the quality of your mains then I would investigate a toroidal transformer. The Maplins Catalogue say that 250 Volt 6 Ampere rectifier diodes are £0.78p each… I have also seen home brewed power supplied from “stacked up” ATX computer power supplies -but I would only recommend this for someone who knows what they are doing!!! regards ralph
Ralph, where did you get hard data that the ac line noise is less in the UK than the United States?
I think lownote was worried about “spikes”, so this may not be a resistor or diode thing, but filtering, as you gravitated to in the latter part of your reply.
I have made consumer products for both the US and the UK and this is the first time I’ve heard we have more noise than you do.
I do know the default refresh rate of 50 hz is much more “flickery” than our 60 hz.
Regards, Greg
Having designed £8million+ computer equipment for both EU and US based establishments I can assure you that US supplies are noisier than EU supplies. In fact US and Canadian banks INSIST on the use of toroidal isolation transformers -and at the power rating that my machines use -that is NOT cheap… This is due in part to the shortness of the transmission lines here in the EU -you are never more than 50-60 Km from a power station. When we had relatives from “Walnut Creek” over a few years ago they all commentated on the lack of filters etc on our audio and computer equipment. Two homes did have their 100Ampere “Board of Trade” fuses blown due to US teenagers who “knew what they were doing”… Here we use Black Blue Brown Grey and Green/Yellow for power wiring. regards ralph