Cobalt Turnout Motor Problems

[Mallard60022]

That could apply in my case.

Blimey you silly bu##er, that leaves me with absolutely no hope at all.

Ar$£

Edited July 27, 2018 by Mallard60022

[WIMorrison]

so do we have a definiive answer on lubrication?

 

I notice also that it appears in the older analogue instructions but not in the IP Digital - does this mean that new materials negate an outdated requirement?

[ChrisG]

I've had a couple apart. It helps to run a sharp blade across the sticker by the terminals to split the case. Some of them take a gentle force to open them up.

There is no internal wiring to be afraid of - it is all contained on the circuit board with motor. There are a few gears in there, but they can only be assembled correctly in one combination, otherwise the two case halves will not mate properly. The only one to watch out for is the final short drive gear to the main arm. It has a slightly different number of teeth at one end - 8 and 9 I think. I check the orientation of it by running it against the main drive arm between my fingers.

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

Thanks Mick - very helpful.

 

 

Chris

[ChrisG]

Thanks Mick - very helpful.

 

 

Chris

 

Here is a motor opened up - cutting the wiring label is what made the difference, and it was then easy.  In the event, half the gears came out with one side of the shell and half with the other but it was a simple matter to replace them.  This was a new, unused,  motor and the lubrication seemed pretty "old" and dry... but I'm no expert and it might have been in prime condition for all I know.   At least I've proved they can be opened up so the option is there to lubricate, assuming you can face removing them from your layout to do so.

 

 

Chris

 

[newbryford]

Here is a motor opened up - cutting the wiring label is what made the difference, and it was then easy.  In the event, half the gears came out with one side of the shell and half with the other but it was a simple matter to replace them.  This was a new, unused,  motor and the lubrication seemed pretty "old" and dry... but I'm no expert and it might have been in prime condition for all I know.   At least I've proved they can be opened up so the option is there to lubricate, assuming you can face removing them from your layout to do so.

 

 

Chris

 

IMG_03801.JPG

 

I've seen a couple with very dry grease and other older ones with good grease - so maybe a batch or storage issue?

(I've also seen some of the original Cobalts that don't need any extra lube)

 

All it needs is a tiny bit of plastic friendly grease (often sold in R/C model shops as servo grease) on the "bearing" seats and a bit on the teeth and away you go.

 

 

Cheers,

Mick

[vulcanbomber]

I have a couple of point that I never bothered fitting point motors too, because they where a cross over which was never used, except very occasionally.

However I now intend to make more use of them and need ideally to automate them.

I have an ESU ECoS as my main controller, which had a high DCC Voltage of 18V.

 

I'm thinking of using the cobalt turnout motors with the DCC decoder built in.

Are these safe to use with an ECoS?

[WIMorrison]

Cobalt IP Digital work happily with 18v DCC as that is what I am feeding them with from my Z21 

[kojak4472]

I have 6 of the 1st generation analogue Cobalt point motors which were purchased 3-4 years ago. I installed them last July 2018 on my O gauge layout. All worked fine. Got the layout part setup last Tuesday and one of the Cobalts was making the clicking noise. Contacted DCC Concepts and this was there reply:-

 

Hi Frank,

 

Thanks for your email.

 

If you have your proof of purchase you can put them in the post back to us. 

We will either fix or replace these.

If you do not have proof of purchase we will either fix at cost or replace again at cost.

 

Kind regards

John

 

As these were bought some time ago I no longer have the receipt but even if I did the postage to UK would not make it worthwhile.

I do operate them at 9v.

Does anyone know how to fix them?

 

Regards Frank

[Anthony566]

Hi Frank.

 

DCC Concepts has an Australian support base aswell as the UK just go back to them and ask for the Australian address to send them to. John probably didn't realise you were in Australia 

 

 

[Andymsa]

It does seem odd that reports of issues with tortoises don't seem to get reported. As you might of guessed I use tortoises and having 170 installed all work flawlessly, yes these maybe dated now but why change a design that's bullit proof. So my recommendation is change to tortoises. 

[newbryford]

1 minute ago, Andymsa said:

It does seem odd that reports of issues with tortoises don't seem to get reported. As you might of guessed I use tortoises and having 170 installed all work flawlessly, yes these maybe dated now but why change a design that's bullit proof. So my recommendation is change to tortoises. 

 

Cobalts are quite a bit smaller (and easier to wire) than a Tortoise.

 

I have a layout with 4" deep baseboards and a Tortoise with soldered leads is pretty near to that. The build was started with Tortoise and ESU Switchpilot, but later pointwork has Cobalt Digital IP. I have to be careful around the Tortoises when moving the layout not to damage them.

 

Part of the initial issue with Cobalts was trying to squeeze the same out of a smaller unit and stressing the smaller gearset that wasn't happy with greater than 9vDC or noisy - i.e. old power supplies. They have strengthened the gears and casing on the later (post 2014?) builds - Digital/ANalog IP and Omega.

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

 

 

[meil]

52 minutes ago, newbryford said:

 

Cobalts are quite a bit smaller (and easier to wire) than a Tortoise.

 

I have a layout with 4" deep baseboards and a Tortoise with soldered leads is pretty near to that. The build was started with Tortoise and ESU Switchpilot, but later pointwork has Cobalt Digital IP. I have to be careful around the Tortoises when moving the layout not to damage them.

 

Part of the initial issue with Cobalts was trying to squeeze the same out of a smaller unit and stressing the smaller gearset that wasn't happy with greater than 9vDC or noisy - i.e. old power supplies. They have strengthened the gears and casing on the later (post 2014?) builds - Digital/ANalog IP and Omega.

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

 

 

Yes they are smaller but the Tortoise have genuine stall motors in them. Unfortunately the Cobalt do not and have to use electronics to mask the fact.

[newbryford]

 

If you take apart a Tortoise and Cobalt, you'll find that they have the same motor...……..

 

The Tortoise and early Cobalts, including the later Omega have similar discrete components.

 

The Digital IP has a DCC decoder on board - so yes - electronics.

The Analog IP has electronics to reduce the static current once the motor is stalled.

A Tortoise and conventional Cobalt will take about 20mA when stalled. An Analog IP switches down to 4-5mA once operation is complete.

 

 

[Peter Beckett]

I am not sure if this info will help that John sent me to overcome a problem

 

Peter

Cobalt Mods.pmd.pdf

[newbryford]

23 minutes ago, Peter Beckett said:

I am not sure if this info will help that John sent me to overcome a problem

 

Peter

Cobalt Mods.pmd.pdf

 

That refers to a batch of the original Cobalt Digital CB1D motor.  They haven't been made for 4-5 years or so.

 

 

[kojak4472]

Well John from DCC Concepts sent me the Oz contact in WA and they got back to me very quickly with the offer to fix the problem, so off to the post office this morning. Thankyou for your imput.

 

Frank

[Junctionmad]

I bought 50 Cobalts mid last year , only one exhibited the “ clicking “ noise and was discarded 

 

hopefully the others won’t develop the issue 

[blueeighties]

Interesting reading through this thread. Thought I would post my experiences. Building my own layouts over the years, I only ever had real experience with NCE and Tortoise control/motor products. Everything was always 100% reliable, easy to install, configure, and use. Last year I was approached by a couple of customers who wanted help with layout builds, the main area being DCC and point control. It was coincidentally about this time that I noticed DCC Concepts, and their impressive stand at shows. I read up on the product range. I liked the overall impression of a premium product, and the 'let's try and make old, complicated solutions much easier and straightforward to install and operate.' impression.  I was sold. And I sold the system to my customers. Over the next 12 months, many, many Cobalt ip digital, Alpha Switch D, Alpha encoder units, and others,  were purchased. And then the issues started with installation and set up.

The first issue was short circuits. We all get them, part and parcel of set up, and the odd one here and there  during a normal layout operating session. However, what is never made apparent or mentioned anywhere in the glossy  literature, is the fact that short circuits quite often cause the ip digital motors to lose their allocated addresses. Maybes not that much of an issue on a small layout, but one customer has 41 Cobalts installed, and as of today, they have all lost their addresses for the umpteenth time. Sometimes a small number lose them, sometimes none, sometimes all. Operating conditions are always the same, the affected motors are sometimes completely random. We have also had encoder units with faulty outputs, new out of the box. 

Today, I have had a day of final troubleshooting and fine tuning on another customers layout. And once again, most of it has been spent trying to trace fault after fault with this system. Todays major issue seemed to be the fact the surface mounted ss motor control boards just would not work properly when electrofrog points were wired too them for frog switching. It's very obvious both visually and aurally when one has a feed to this particular swich reversed incorrecty ...that's a good thing as it's obvious things need to be swapped around to work correctly. But as per usual no, even when everything had been tested, tested again, proved to be installed correctly, locos ran over correctly, it would then completely randomly throw a wobbly for no logical reason whatsoever. Quite a few of our weekly sessions have turned into a quite frankly, time wasting exercise such as this. The only logical conclusion I can come to is due to the fact that traditionally a DCC system has a separate track and accessory bus, wheras the major selling point of the Concepts system is that you only use the one main bus, both track and accessory info and power are sent through it, and this seems to be where the conflicts are and the issues arise. For me the system does not seem to reliably work, and for this reason alone, having just started installation of DCC control systems on my new personal layout, I will be sticking with the tried and tested, and inherently reliable seperate track and accessory DCC control buses. I was all for using Concepts products, but not after these experiences.

Many other similar issues have presented themselves during the last 12 months. I don't profess to be an expert, but I do have a decent experience and understanding of electrical control system installation, and in my 30+ years of doing them, never have I had so many issues and problems. And  it's, not just me, other customers who are installing their own are just as frustrated.

I'll leave it at that and put it down to experience, but I would never, ever recommend these control systems again. 

Another small point is product availability, certain core system components such as the Alpha switch D, have now been out of stock in excess of 9 months. That has prevented planned system expansions, and we have had to choose other manufacturer solutions. 

Never again.

 

Regards,

 

Lee 

[Hitchin Junction]

My impression of Cobalts when they first appeared was "Why are they so expensive?" I can understand someone wanting to make less costly versions of Tortoises, but not more expensive ones.

 

Subsequently, I've noted so many post introduction changes and new versions, I concluded that the design was not fully understood and thought through, nor sufficiently tested prior to original shipping.

 

Tim

[Andymsa]

Some time ago it was pointed out to me that tortoises are outdated as they have never been updated from there design introduction. My thoughts are why reinvent the wheel, all the fancy intergrated dcc electronics, the lack of throwing the point by hand, the various redesigns have put me off colbalts. And judging by the issues users are getting a well founded product choice by the looks of it going with tortoises. How many reports of tortoise issues do you see, not saying they don't get faults, but if any of my 220 tortoises do get a fault just I take it out and put new one in, No redoing the dcc address. And one final point colbalts are not true stall motors as like the tortoise. I'm very surprised by the comment that you can run the colbalts off the track bus by the manufacturers although technically possible it's not very recommended especially when you run a point. Yes the colbalt is smaller but not by much but the size of the tortoises has never been an issue for me, So for me I'll stay with what works. I don't like to bash the colbalt but as a famous advert says does it do what's on the tin 100% of the time or even 99%? Judging by the posts I would say no.

[meil]

10 hours ago, blueeighties said:

Interesting reading through this thread. Thought I would post my experiences. Building my own layouts over the years, I only ever had real experience with NCE and Tortoise control/motor products. Everything was always 100% reliable, easy to install, configure, and use. Last year I was approached by a couple of customers who wanted help with layout builds, the main area being DCC and point control. It was coincidentally about this time that I noticed DCC Concepts, and their impressive stand at shows. I read up on the product range. I liked the overall impression of a premium product, and the 'let's try and make old, complicated solutions much easier and straightforward to install and operate.' impression.  I was sold. And I sold the system to my customers. Over the next 12 months, many, many Cobalt ip digital, Alpha Switch D, Alpha encoder units, and others,  were purchased. And then the issues started with installation and set up.

The first issue was short circuits. We all get them, part and parcel of set up, and the odd one here and there  during a normal layout operating session. However, what is never made apparent or mentioned anywhere in the glossy  literature, is the fact that short circuits quite often cause the ip digital motors to lose their allocated addresses. Maybes not that much of an issue on a small layout, but one customer has 41 Cobalts installed, and as of today, they have all lost their addresses for the umpteenth time. Sometimes a small number lose them, sometimes none, sometimes all. Operating conditions are always the same, the affected motors are sometimes completely random. We have also had encoder units with faulty outputs, new out of the box. 

Today, I have had a day of final troubleshooting and fine tuning on another customers layout. And once again, most of it has been spent trying to trace fault after fault with this system. Todays major issue seemed to be the fact the surface mounted ss motor control boards just would not work properly when electrofrog points were wired too them for frog switching. It's very obvious both visually and aurally when one has a feed to this particular swich reversed incorrecty ...that's a good thing as it's obvious things need to be swapped around to work correctly. But as per usual no, even when everything had been tested, tested again, proved to be installed correctly, locos ran over correctly, it would then completely randomly throw a wobbly for no logical reason whatsoever. Quite a few of our weekly sessions have turned into a quite frankly, time wasting exercise such as this. The only logical conclusion I can come to is due to the fact that traditionally a DCC system has a separate track and accessory bus, wheras the major selling point of the Concepts system is that you only use the one main bus, both track and accessory info and power are sent through it, and this seems to be where the conflicts are and the issues arise. For me the system does not seem to reliably work, and for this reason alone, having just started installation of DCC control systems on my new personal layout, I will be sticking with the tried and tested, and inherently reliable seperate track and accessory DCC control buses. I was all for using Concepts products, but not after these experiences.

Many other similar issues have presented themselves during the last 12 months. I don't profess to be an expert, but I do have a decent experience and understanding of electrical control system installation, and in my 30+ years of doing them, never have I had so many issues and problems. And  it's, not just me, other customers who are installing their own are just as frustrated.

I'll leave it at that and put it down to experience, but I would never, ever recommend these control systems again. 

Another small point is product availability, certain core system components such as the Alpha switch D, have now been out of stock in excess of 9 months. That has prevented planned system expansions, and we have had to choose other manufacturer solutions. 

Never again.

 

Regards,

 

Lee 

It is simply not a good idea to power track and accessories from the same bus. If the track has a short (easily done by not throwing a point correctly) then you loose the ability to correct it as it has also shorted out the accessories.

 

It is much better practise to have separate track and accessory buses. Also you are not over loading the track bus with accessory demands.

[blueeighties]

58 minutes ago, meil said:

It is simply not a good idea to power track and accessories from the same bus. If the track has a short (easily done by not throwing a point correctly) then you loose the ability to correct it as it has also shorted out the accessories.

 

It is much better practise to have separate track and accessory buses. Also you are not over loading the track bus with accessory demands.

Yes agreed. Which is why this morning, the customer has given me the go ahead to bin the DCC Concepts control system and replace with something that actually works. We are going traditional, tried and tested, 100% reliable, seperate track and accessory bus, and traditional switching.

[Anthony566]

34 minutes ago, blueeighties said:

Yes agreed. Which is why this morning, the customer has given me the go ahead to bin the DCC Concepts control system and replace with something that actually works. We are going traditional, tried and tested, 100% reliable, seperate track and accessory bus, and traditional switching.

 

Hi Lee,

 

You do know that Digital iP Points can be operated via a separate accessory bus ??  you just need to wire the track bus through the second switch on the Digital iP.

 

 

[WIMorrison]

9 minutes ago, Anthony566 said:

 

Hi Lee,

 

You do know that Digital iP Points can be operated via a separate accessory bus ??  you just need to wire the track bus through the second switch on the Digital iP.

 

 

Exactly what I do and with 43 of them I should be experiencing all sorts of issues going by what is said here - but I don’t.

[blueeighties]

25 minutes ago, Anthony566 said:

 

Hi Lee,

 

You do know that Digital iP Points can be operated via a separate accessory bus ??  you just need to wire the track bus through the second switch on the Digital iP.

 

 

Of course. Any DCC compatible point motor can be operated via a seperate accessory bus. But the major DCC Concepts selling point, is the fact that Alpha control systems use just the one bus for track and accessory control. That's a major selling point for customers in terms of saving time and money during installation. Less wiring, switching etc. Unfortunatley, this has not proved to be the case by a long stretch.