turntable motor

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I am building a HO-turntable (13" bridge)and need a motor to drive it, whitout making a gearbox. I understand the Hankscraft 3440 is a good proposition. This is used frequently for turnouts.

However, will the 3V - 2RPM units have adequate torque for turning a 2 lbs engine, since on the site www.wiringfordcc.com it is recommended not to use the 12V units?

-- André Kemper (andre.k@zonnet.nl), March 16, 2004

Answers

Andre,

I believe the reference to not using 12V motors was with regard in using them for stall applications like controlling turnouts. You should be able to use 12V if you wish.

Either way, the motor should have enough torque. The bearings are supporting your two pound locomotive. So the motor actually has a fairly easy job. The friction in the bearings is most of what the motor sees.

However, you may have other issues in using a Hankscraft motor. You will likely find a 2 RPM motor a little too fast for a turntable.

Worse, you will likely find the motor to coast after you remove power. It therefore may keep overshooting where you want to stop making rail alignment difficult.

-- Allan Gartner (bigboy@wiringfordcc.com), March 16, 2004.


The problem of overshoot is duty to the large amount of gear reduction inside the motor. You would be amazed at how far the motor will go even if you just briefly apply a battery to the motor leads. In fact, if you have one of these motors, you should try it.

You can try powering one of these motors with a decoder. You might have success if the decoder will slow the motor way down from its rated speed.

I would get one of these motors and experiment with it before hooking it to your turntable. If you have success using a decoder, try hooking it to your turntable and let us know.

I just wanted to let you know about the overshoot problem before you settled on this approach to operating your turntable.

-- Allan Gartner (bigboy@wiringfordcc.com), March 16, 2004.


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