Regulator motor current
Hello all,
Does anyone know exactly how much current the DC motor which operates the regulator actually requires ? I would like to understand both the inrush and steady state current while rotating.
The reason is that I am trying out some solid-state relay chips to replace the big electro-mechanical relay on the loco circuit board. I've obviously started a bit small and now have a selection of blown solid-state relays. The most recent claimed it was rated to 500mA, which I thought would be enough, but it can't get past the inrush current. The relay starts to operate, the motor twitches and then the relay must be shutting down due to excess current. All I get is a twitching motor.
As the whole point of the exercise is to shrink the size of the relay/pcb, I'm wanting the smallest I can get away with. As it's a normally closed relay which opens when the voltage gets high, it's the opposite way round to most, so I have a limited choice.
Any thoughts / measurements anyone ?
Thanks,
David
Just to conclude this thread - I now have some larger solid-state relays and have successfully used on to drive the regulator motor both ways. Of course it's a completely different footprint to the original relay, so my next task is to find a way to fit it snugly to the circuit board.
The relay I am using is made by IXYS and is a part number LCB710. It's a normally closed relay, so uses the existing circuit to actively switch it. It's rated at 1A continuous current and a 5A peak current (only for 10ms) which seems to be enough. And it's still a good bit smaller than the orignal electr-mechanical relay.
Now back to fitting it all together inside a loco.
David