advice

Hi , I have a tam valley hex frog juicer which is used for frog switching on an N gauge peco electrofrog 3 way asymetric point and a single slip .the PM's are Cobalt analogues and are powered from Lenz LS100 accessory decoders my question is one I can't get my head around and I need confimation that the setup I described means that the Cobalts in question require no connection to the tracks am I right or wrong ?.

cluncker said

Hi , I have a tam valley hex frog juicer which is used for frog switching on an N gauge peco electrofrog 3 way asymetric point and a single slip .the PM's are Cobalt analogues and are powered from Lenz LS100 accessory decoders my question is one I can't get my head around and I need confimation that the setup I described means that the Cobalts in question require no connection to the tracks am I right or wrong ?.

From “Cobalt analogues and frog juicers”, 1st May 2023, 10:56 am

I'll let one of the actual modelers answer this properly but as the resident geeky tech guy i legitimately had to google "tam valley hex frog juicer " to figure out if this was a real thing lol

To be fair i play a lot of Hearthstone and the cross over to this is what made me question it

Lol , yes strange name is'nt it ? but I assure you that they are real , I should also have said that I use another one this one being a dual frog juicer also by Tam valley that handles the frogs on a scissors crossover and again I cannot decide if the Cobalts (4 off on that one) require a DDC track feed ? .

Hi Clunker

If your using frog juicers to switch the polarity of the frogs, there is no need for the point motors to be connected to the frogs for switching as well.


Ed

Ed said

Hi Clunker

If your using frog juicers to switch the polarity of the frogs, there is no need for the point motors to be connected to the frogs for switching as well.


Ed

From “Post #287,602”, 1st May 2023, 12:06 pm

 Agreed

Thank you Ed and Sol , I thought as much but somehow a definitive answer eluded me ,
I wonder also whether anyone has any experience of a Cobalt going bad and causing a short when  it and it's corresponding point are wired conventionally ? ie no frog juicer ? I have short that is proving very difficult to find and i'm trying to eliminate all possible causes .

DCC Concepts have a forum
The Focus Forum     which can answer many problems with their items

Thank you Ron , i've now signed up and will see if I can learn anything there .

I'd like to add something to this post as it may help someone in the future with the same problem that I have had .I should fistly explain that I have/had a Lenz LZV100 based system but have recently upgraded to the LZV200 out of desperation in trying to trace the origin of an apparent short , I went through everything testing all cobalts all occupancy detectors etc and got nowhere so on advice from A&H models I upgraded to the LZV200 which I had been thinking of doing anyway since it's release, having installed the LZV200 I was disheartened to find that I still had a short , I thought that i'd familarise myself with the new LH101 handset so I disconnected the power to the tracks and tried to switch a point but nothing happened I then gave a cobalt 12 V from a DC PSU and it worked so I then decided to test the PSU an old Hornby 16 V AC psu that supplied power to the Lenz LS100's and had done so reliably for around 7 years on testing the Horby unit I was horrified to see that it was outputting not 16 V but 24 V so I disconnected it and replaced it with a LAB type PSU reconnected the tracks and switched a Cobalt and it worked just fine , what I think was causing the LZV100 and 200 to shut down was the overvoltage being supplied to the LS100's and they were the cause of the apparent short that was not a short because at 24 volts their over voltage protection kicked in , so it's a lesson to me to never ignore PSU's when you have a problem that you just cannot trace .