Aristcraft Mallet

[Bram]

this is a super looking piece of kit that a friend of mine owns.
It ran very well on analogue and again via the Train Engineer - no problems encountered at all.

Decision taken to chip (Aristo chip) the loco so that it ran on the Revolution - tested it yesterday and it run well for 200 foot and then it fried the control board, much wailing and gnashing of teeth followed.

Has anybody experiencd/come across this or any of you electronically minded bods have any suggestions as to why this happened????

 

[themole]

What was the current rate of the chip? it sounds like the chipfried because the electric motor(s) draw more current than the chip provided. Alyn

 

[ntpntpntp]

No experience of the Revolution system myself, but from what I've read the Revolution onboard receiver handles 5 amps with 8 amp peak (the same as I'd expect for a DCC decoder ) - should be plenty for the Mallet I'd have thought?

 

[Bram]

The chip itself looks fine, it's the main control board that the chip plugs into that has been fried.
The voltage to the track is 18v constant and the amperage is usually below 5, we cannot fathom the reason for the burnout. We are coming to the conclusion that it might be the chip that's caused the problem.