NP Lester WA T-Trak Z Module Set Project

rray Feb 11, 2020

  1. gmorider

    gmorider TrainBoard Member

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    Yes, somehow, when I measure carefully and do so again, the spec gremlins change the number or numbers. This is evident in my last pic post. :eek:
     
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  2. gmorider

    gmorider TrainBoard Member

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    rray: And one more thing, your work looks great. ;)
     
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  3. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    I scaled down the water tower, assembled and painted it. Then I got a wild hair and decided to put a lamp over the standpipe room door. So I tried to make a crookneck lamp, but I cannot bend this tube correctly, but I was able to bend a 90 degree, just not a crookneck. For comparison there is an old staple so you can see how long the lamp really is, about half a staples length and twice as thick.

    I used a 3mm sterling silver bead cap from the bead making hobby as a lamp shade, some 1mm brass tube, and soldered in an 0603 warm white LED to make a working lamp. The red wire was threaded through the tube before bending, and the black wire was cut 2mm from the LED, then soldered onto the tube. Next the lampshade was slid over the LED, and soldered onto the tube.
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    So this water tank measures a scale 18 feet high with a radius of 12.5 feet so it's about 65,000 gallons. This tank looks about the correct size for my scene, so I will leave it at that. I used .006" brass wire to make the steel bands around the tank, and just twisted the wire tight, then cut the twisted wire, leaving .1" of twist, and folded it over to represent the turnbuckles. I drilled a hole over the door, superglued in the lamp, soldered a 3K ohms 0603 resistor to dim the lamp to a more realistic glow for 12V, and painted the lampshade dark green.

    I decided I am going to build a new Lester Depot, but this time I am going to install more interior lights, and make a couple more of those porch lamps for under the depot eaves just like the prototype had. This time I am going to use 3K ohm resistors so the brightness is not too intense.
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  4. shamoo737

    shamoo737 Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    I always love all the little details in your modules.
     
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  5. JoeS

    JoeS TrainBoard Member

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    I like your water tanks! Heck I still got the MT one I built. It’s a classic. If you think about it you can still see round houses today. Turntables and even old coal towers. But trying to find old water tanks still standing is tough!
     
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  6. JoeS

    JoeS TrainBoard Member

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    Oh and by MT...I mean the one you designed!
     
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  7. bostonjim

    bostonjim TrainBoard Member

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    The light looks great. Adding lights to the depot is going to be nice. I like the person peeking out the second floor window. Does she stay? The water tower looks good. It is nice to be able to adjust things as you go along as you are doing. Be well. Jim
     
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  8. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    So today I figured out how to make crookneck lamps, as I need them for my Lester Depot. I used the 0.9mm brass tube, because I could not bend the 1.0mm tube correctly. I had to heat the .9mm tube so I can fit the wire through it.

    I cut a 6mm length of tube, thread the red wire through the tube and pull it to almost touching the 0603 LED. Next I cut the black wire to 1.5mm from the end of the LED and pull off the insulation, then solder it to the end of the brass tube. Next I bend the tube in my MTL Trip Pin pliers to get a "U Shape" and while holding the tube in the Trip Pin pliers, I use round nose wire pliers to bend the crook neck shape.

    After that I slide on a 3mm sterling silver (solderable) bead end finding to use as the lampshade, and holding the crookneck with forceps, I use tweezers and the soldering iron to push the lampshade as close to the LED as possible without shorting the anode to the cathode. I then fill in the underside of the lampshade with Testors clear parts cement, which when dry acts as an insulator that prevents touching the LED from actually moving it to a short circuit.

    Last I painted mine with dark green Tamiya for that industrial look I like. I use a 3K resistor network in the 0603 4 pack package, and a 4001 protection diode so they will not be too bright, last a long time with 12V, and have reverse current protection. I have 2 of the resistor networks wired to the protection diode, so I can run up to 8 LED's total in parallel for my depot, each with it's own 3K resistor, limiting them to about 4 milliamps for each LED. That leaves them bright enough to be seen, but not so bright as to wash out photos by messing with the camera's auto brightness.

    If I want one of the LED's to be much brighter than the others, I can just solder to 2 of the resistor network's pins, which will change it to 1.5K ohms, and thus 8 milliamps brightness, which is what I might do with the lamp I am putting in the freight room on my next build of the Lester Depot.
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  9. HemiAdda2d

    HemiAdda2d Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    This is off the hook cool! Were you an electronics engineer in a previous career?
     
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  10. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    Nope, but I did work 40 years in the Semiconductor industry as Line Maintenance, Field Service, and Equipment Manufacturing. I built, installed, and maintained the machines that are used to build computer chips.

    Here is me at the front of the machine I was building a couple years ago. Yes, I really did work at a company named "Ultratech". In Silicon Valley you had company names just like they spoofed in the movie "Office Space", calling our company "Ultra-Techy-Tech" This machine is a Laser Spike Anneal tool. It melts the surface of the silicon wafer for a couple microseconds, which allows the "Like Charged Dopant Atoms" to repel each other and spread out evenly, then they instantly freeze in place. This step is crucial for making nanometer scale chips. My machine has 2 computer monitors to operate it, 1 more for performing build and maintenance steps, and a 4th to see what is going on inside. The melt beam is invisible, but you can see what it hits easily enough as 4000 watts of laser energy tends to make things radiate IR energy that cameras can clearly see:
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    Here is the backside of the machine. It's about 40 feet long. The part behind the ladder is a Rofin 4000W CO2 laser, and can punch a 12mm hole through 1/2" aluminum plate in less than a second. The next cabinet houses the remote optics rack. There we have all kinds of optics to form the beam. We have to polarize and expand the beam here. Lots of expensive mirrors and beam dumps in there. Then the beam goes through the red beam tube to the environmental chamber, where it gets converted from a round beam to a uniform line, before hitting the wafer for processing. Robots inside move the wafers in, put them on a stage that precisely moves the wafers under the beam for processing, and back out. Not visible is a large water chiller to remove the excess heat generated from the machine. It requires 70 Amps, 480 Volts for each of 3 phases to operate, and is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
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    I was standing back here and witnessed a catastrophic failure meltdown, which caused the safety department to shut us down for a week. In 2-3 seconds I seen water lines melt, a beam dump explode, and the laser punch through eight 1/4" aluminum beam tubes. I froze, because the beam is invisible, and it happened so fast I didn't want to be capped while running through a beam. Fortunately, water pouring over a leak detector shut the whole thing down withing seconds, but seconds verses the speed of light seems like an eternity. Yes, i am glad I am retired.
     
  11. HemiAdda2d

    HemiAdda2d Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Incredible machines! Lasers are great tools, but like you noted, can be dangerous. Years of training and safety protocols probably drove you to freeze rather than flight and risk running into the laser beams when it failed. Safety briefings and tech manual safety summaries are there for a reason...
    Good to see that expertise remaining razor sharp in your modeling.
     
  12. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    Laser Sharp, not razor sharp! :D
     
  13. HemiAdda2d

    HemiAdda2d Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    I stand corrected! :eek: :p
     
  14. gmorider

    gmorider TrainBoard Member

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    Mr. rray, you are a smart man. I knew you would solve the problem with the crook neck lamp. good job. (y)
     
  15. husafreak

    husafreak TrainBoard Member

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    Again, thank you for the “how to” posts, much appreciated. I bought bunches of 12V Pico LEDs on fleabay that came with a small resistor already installed. I have bundled them in a few buildings. Then I got some 12V dimmer boxes. I thought the resistor in the LED determined the color. Could I use a resistor bank like you show to change the brightness? I imagine my dimmer boxes do the same thing but they are bulky compared to a tiny resistor!
     
  16. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    Yes you can use a resistor network can change the brightness. The resistor networks I purchased were 100 pieces on an SMT tape for $1.22 and 48 cents shipping from ebay. I selected the 302 marked ones, which means 30+2 zeroes, or 3000 ohms.

    With four 3K resistors in them, you can wire 4 legs on one side of the package together, and connect a leg of 4 separate LED's to the other side. Or, you can connect an LED leg to 2 pins for 1.5K ohms resistance, 3 pins give you 1K, and all four would give you 750 ohms.

    So if you have 12V in and 1 output pin to your LED, you get 4 milliamps, 2 pins gives 8ma, 3 pins give 12ma and all 4 give 16 milliamps which is the brightest I would go on one of those tiny SMT LED's because your 12V supply might actually measure 13.8V or more and push the 20 milliamp limit of your LED. At 4 milliamps the brightness looks just about right for a warm white LED to simulate an incandescent light, and your LED should last forever.

    Soldering these babies is not for the casual hobbyist, as they are tiny at 3.2mm x 1.6mm, and you can probably fit 4 of them inside a peppercorn shell.
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  17. Chris333

    Chris333 TrainBoard Supporter

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    Did Robert tell you guys about the time he made popcorn? :LOL:

     
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  18. husafreak

    husafreak TrainBoard Member

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    That's a great explanation Robert. I bought a bunch of those dimmer boxes just because greater realism is achieved with lights of different brightnesses. Especially today so a modern layout would have bright white lights all the way to dim soft whites. Being able to make that decision at each tiny resistor bank is brilliant.
     
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  19. husafreak

    husafreak TrainBoard Member

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    FWIW it was easy to find those resistors on fleabay.
     
  20. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    It should have been, the highlighted text in my post is a hyperlink to the parts I used. :D You just needed to click on the text to be sent to the item, if I posted it correctly.
     

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