Hello Everyone, New member on the forum and 1st post. A little about my layout. New to Model Railroading beginning of last year. I model On30 - late 1800's. Finished my bench work - track work (2 modules total 5' x 5') and have another couple of months of scenery to finish. Modeling a winter mountain scene with a 33" tunnel (using 4" plaster rock tunnel liners) and 18" scratch built Timber pile tresle bridge over a river is challenging. Anyway... To the point. I use a 'cheap' 16V DC transformer to exclusively power my accessories and have added a Sleuth Steam Generator (9V - 16V) to a building chimney. Smokes way to fast/much with the 14V+ being supplied. I believe it will start smoking at around 9V and would like to get the voltage down to around there and start experimenting with the smoke output and adjust accordingly. I was told that a step microtransformer would be kludgy. Any suggestions / ideas would be sincerely appreciated. Having a blast learning in Houston Texas. Walt
why not just hook up a variable resistor, also known as a potentiometer ("pot"), in series with the voltage to the smoke generator, then you can dial it up/down and tune as needed. Here's a R-Shack link
Put you multimeter on the amps scale in series with one power lead and measure how much current is being drawn by the smoke unit. Then you can calculate how much resistance is needed and find out what wattage resistor/potentiometer you will need. Some meters have a 20 amp max and some a 10 amp max. The next scale down is sometimes 200ma. I think the smoke unit might draw about 100ma from a couple examples I have seen. Rich
If the current is low, say less than 500 mA or so, you can try one of those wall warts with the voltage setting switch. 9 volts is always available, as are a couple of higher ones, in case you want more smoke.
if the current is under an amp and it is DC, i'd use a 7812 or 7808 voltage regulator, +12v or +8v they are available at ur local electronics shop, and easy to wire in. my thoughts! Brad
Put a smile on my face Rick / Rich / Mike / Brad: Sincerely appreciate the input - On my way to Radio Shack at lunch today... The ironic thing is that I went to a large, established Electronic Outlet Store here in Houston in December and they recommended the Step Transformer - never mentioned a 'pot' or wall wart... Go figure. Thank you! Walt
If you use a small potentiameter for this, just be aware that it might get a bit warm. Most of the RS pots seem to be rated at 0.5W, and with the Seuthe (not Sleuth) gadgets drawing 120-130 mA, you'll exceed 1W. The pots can probably handle it, but know that you be operating them beyond the published specs. - Jeff
