I need help on power supply

[Dr. Phil]

I just got a 6 Lane TKO track that is 45 Ft. long and 10 Ft. wide, how do I power this track. I have been looking for a 50 amp power but no luck.

can some one help me. PLEASE

[chrisguyw]

Hello Dr.,..............I don't race much HO these days, so don't keep up to date with power supplies that go much above 12 volts.............hopefully RichD will chime in (or you could message him).....he will be able to help !!

Cheers
Chris Walker

[RichD]

Here is the scoop on power supplies: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r_m...ew?usp=sharing
50 amps is a lot of power. Mastech sells a 50 amp switching power supply, but that only goes up to 15 volts. The biggest 0-30 volt power supply is 30 amps, you could use two of those with each one running 3 lanes. The length of the track does not matter when you are selecting a power supply, it is the cars that use the power. Unless you are running Restricted Open or Unrestricted cars you will not need that much power. You could go with a single 30 amp variable voltage power supply and have 5 amps per lane, which should be plenty. Be sure to have a separate fuse or breaker for each driver's station.
Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPqg...ature=youtu.be

[Pappy]

I agree with RichD, you don't need 50 amps. This is the power pack I'm going to purchase for my new six lane track that I will be running 1/32 and 1/24 scale cars on. The average lane will be about 105'. I think 30 amps would be plenty for HO cars. I had a 30 amp power pack on my four lane track that I just sold and it was plenty of power for 1/32 and 1/24. I used 75 amp power packs on my commercial eight lane tracks with no problems.

I like this power pack because you can vary the voltage and it's got the digital readout right on the power pack.

http://www.mastechpowersupply.com/vo...tion-p106.html

[RichD]

On an unrelated issue I was wondering how you would reach cars that came off in the middle of a table that big. Possibly nobody would ever come off, that would be highly unlikely of course. The track could be designed so the places where you were likely to come off would be near the edges. For most people a four foot reach is about it, beyond that you would need to use grabbers or a stick with a big neo magnet at the end to retrieve the cars. If you ever wanted to hold races on your track you would need to do track calls whenever cars came off. Marshaling cars using grabbers or a stick is not a happy thing.

[noddaz]

You do not need a 50 amp power supply. I have been using a 10 amp MG power supply for years with TJets. But we should ask, what do you intend to race?
And please include pictures of the track!

[Dr. Phil]

I will be racing Stock, Super Stock, Mods, and Neo. So I was told to get at least 50 amps. now if that is wrong please can someone tell me what is right.

[RichD]

It does not look like you read my article, or possibly it was difficult to understand. If you want to pick a power supply you need to know how much power the cars will use. As I pointed out in the article slot cars use a lot more power when they start up than when they get moving. You can't measure the starting current draw using conventional means because neither analog or digital amp meters will display a peak value. Analog meters have too much inertia and digital meters only show a time averaged value. Knowing the ohm value of the armature you can calculate the maximum starting amperage. For a six lane track and neo cars 50 amps would seem to be appropriate, however if you size the power supply for what the cars draw when they are moving you can get by with a much smaller one. I would expect that a moving neo car would use 3 amps at most, so a 30 amp power supply should be OK. One question that I can't give a positive answer about is what happens when six neo cars all start up at the same time, the total draw could possibly be 60 amps for a split second. With a 30 amp power supply the voltage would dip for an instant, but within a second or less it would be back to full voltage. With some power supplies a protective circuit might be triggered briefly, with others the protective circuit might shut down the power supply until it was reset and that would be a problem.
My best advice is to get a 30 amp power supply and see how that works. Do you really expect to have six neo cars on the track at the same time? In any case if you were to find that you needed more power you could just buy a second 30 amp supply and use each one to power three lanes as I suggested earlier.
By the way my own track is powered by two Mastech Volteq 0-30 volt 20 amp power supplies each running two lanes. That might be massive overkill in my case and they cost $230 each. I do hold races on my track but we seldom run cars with armatures less than 6 ohms. I had one power supply fail when it was turned on and it is very difficult to find anyone that repairs them. It was easier for me to buy a new unit, while I was waiting for that I ran the whole track on one power supply. Volteq power supplies are recommended by the maker for slot track applications.

[Maddman]

Section 17.2 of the HOPRA rulebook states:

Eighteen (18) volt minimum, nineteen (19) volt maximum filtered power supplies, battery or combination thereof shall be used at the HOPRA National Championship Race. Twenty (20) volt filtered power supplies shall be used for Vintage T-Jet class. Power supplies must meet the following specifications of 20 amps minimum per a 4-lane track with 5amps min per lane.

A six lane track would need a power supply with a minimum capacity of 30 Amps (6 Lanes x 5 Amps/Lane).

Rivergate distributing offers 45 Amp and larger power supplies for RC and 1/24th scale tracks. Contact them for further information about using one on an HO track.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

I have a Mastec 30/30, and it has been great. No problems at all. I got it when they first showed up on Ebay- what was that? 10-12 years?