Which DE10 for me? Small layout planning discussion, too...

[Guest ___]

Interesting comments regarding the Tomix KiHa 40. My example (see signature picture) is a little noisy, but runs quite smoothly and reliably. Sadly my brown Tomix DE10, one of my first Japanese models, isn't so great.

 

Mine is not quite as bad post-refit. but its still loud.

[cteno4]

The growling in the tomix de10 is their use of a long spring off the motor drive shaft that acts like a worm gear over the main truck gears. A few other tomix cars use the same spring driveshaft/worm gear setup (rich can probably list which ones).

 

When new it growls lightly, but does run well. It appears with age the spring slowly wears out the housings around the ends where the end of the spring is acting as the worm gear. This makes it get louder and also get more jerky. In Aaron's case it looks like it burned up his motor. When I replaced the motor I tried like the dickens to clean it all out and get it working as best as possible (ie like a couple of dozen disassembles/reassembles) and was able to get it running smoothly and get it a bit quieter but still growling.

 

It's a unique idea, but in practice the spinning spring want the ends to fan out due to the centripetal force decreasing as the spring bends out. This could have been solved with a metal pin in the end if each spring to keep it from bending outward at the end while spinning. The current design uses the plastic housing and the truck gears to do that and metal spring against plastic housing and gear, which do you think wins in the end!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[keitaro]

What curves are you using only the newer de10`s from tomix/kato support mini curves i think the olders did not.

 

While they run some times they can de-rail.

 

Anyway wish best of luck with it the new kato and tomix are both great and the new tomix does not use the worm drive.

[Ken Ford]

I seem to recall having older (Arnold?) switchers with spring driveshafts. No thank you!

Edited July 15, 2014 by Ken Ford

[katoftw]

The tightest curve I have had my KATO DE10 on is R249.

[Ken Ford]

I'm hoping for R282, so I should be OK.

[katoftw]

Yeah R282 will be fine.

[Ken Ford]

I think I've found a locale for this fictitious layout - on the JR West Kuzuryū Line close to the end in Kuzuryko. This line is very appealing, it feels very much like Colorado to me. It has lots of tunnels to help hide the ends of the layout and magnificent scenery (thank you, StreetView!)

 

That means a Tomix KiHa120 DMU. Do these have spring drive, too?

Edited July 15, 2014 by Ken Ford

[kvp]

Modern tomix trains don't have a spring drive. Even the cheap train collection trains have cardan shaft drives with flywheels. If it was produced in the last 10 years, then you can be almost 100% sure, that it doesn't have a spring drive.

[cteno4]

I think I remember rich mentioning that there were a couple of tomix trains still using the mech, but it was a few years since the topic was last up. Maybe he will chime in.

 

Jeff

[katoftw]

I got a DE10 in my Tomix Kesei Sayanora freight car set 6 months back. Nil growling.

[Guest ___]

Modern tomix trains don't have a spring drive. Even the cheap train collection trains have cardan shaft drives with flywheels. If it was produced in the last 10 years, then you can be almost 100% sure, that it doesn't have a spring drive.

 

The KiHa 40 released about two years ago does. Unless, they re-powered it since 2012.

[kvp]

Can someone confirm, what kind of drive these sets have?

KiHa 40/47/48:  8401-8410 8420    92978  (released: 2009-2010)

[cteno4]

Kvp,

 

brill27mcb is the man who might be able to answer this, he and some of his east penn cohorts are super knowledgeable about tomix details like this!

 

My two tomix de10 sets from like 5 years back have the worm drive but are reasonably quiet and smooth running. They have not yet gotten huge amounts of use yet so I don't know if they might degrade with time or if they have improved the design as I have not completely torn them apart and compared to the likes of Aaron's old growly de10.

 

Jeff

Edited July 16, 2014 by cteno4

[Ken Ford]

Since the current Tomix DE10 is worm drive, it sounds like the main reason to pick one over the other for me is the easier DCC conversion of the Kato. If I were using DC it sounds like it would be a wash.

[Densha]

Can someone confirm, what kind of drive these sets have?

KiHa 40/47/48:  8401-8410 8420    92978  (released: 2009-2010)

I have the Tomix 8441 from 2012, which I believe does have the same tooling. Some pics of when I took it apart to find the cause of the growling which I didn't in the end:

 

 

[kvp]

Thanks! This looks like the same cardan drive that tomytec motors use. Pretty simple and sturdy. The growling imho could be a 3 pole straight wound motor's normal vibration when fed from an 50/60 hz pulsed power controller.

[Densha]

The destination signs and front and back lights were also flickering constantly. Thinking back it sounded like an electronical noise. The model was also shaking a bit because of it but it accelerating and decelerating was very smooth. Still I got annoyed by it so much that it put it back together and never rode it again. The videos I viewed of other KiHa 40's with the same tooling didn't have the growling nor flickering.

[HantuBlauLOL]

Yes, I have a Tomix KiHa 40 as well and it growls terribly. I've still not been able to find the cause though. It seems to have something to do with power pick-up as well but at some point I stopped looking for a cause and now it's sitting in a closet... gotta find a solution sometime.

pre 2006 tomix motors growls terribly, even the 800系's flywheel'd motor. Some of them also have a terrible low speed movement.