# wall worts



## T-Jet Racer (Nov 16, 2006)

Hey I have a question and was wondering if anyone ever tried this. If you have a 4 lane track like the Greg Braun door setup with 4 wall worts, put 2 on each side of the track and jump all 4 worts so they would be parralled. wouldnt that solve the power drop issue plus supply about 4 amps to the system. I will be putting together a door setup this weekend for my friend.


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## twolff (May 11, 2007)

I'm not sure I understand how you would be wiring them with the description you posted. One of the problems with Wall Warts is with regulation. They don't compensate for changes in the load. You want to isolate each lane so that load changes on one lane does not affect the others. Hooking 4 wall warts in parallel will increase the total current capacity, but will not provide regulation. Best case would be a single wall wart per lane. Or a single regulated power supply of sufficent current capacity.


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## T-Jet Racer (Nov 16, 2006)

yea, I also forgot the need to jump over the controll wire so keep them seperate and tap to the othe side it is thanks


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## Slott V (Feb 3, 2005)

You can double up or triple up the wall warts in parallel but they won't give you clean power since they simply use a cheap diode rectifier to chop the AC wave into DC. You still have ripple. But for someone on a budget it will be better than stock.

This is my old set up using 2 per lane on a 4 lane:










It ended up on another members' track and we made it a cleaner set up: (just to throw out ideas)










-Scott


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

Where are you figuring to get 4 amps? The Tomy warts only put out around 0.3 amps each. To get 4 amps you would have to wire 13 of them in parallel. Unless you get a bunch of these for free it's not cost effective to gang them up.

Make sure you get the polarity correct when you are wiring these in parallel.


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## T-Jet Racer (Nov 16, 2006)

I have not read the wort, hard to believe it's that low on the output side but I'll take your word on it


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## Jimmy49098 (Jan 5, 2006)

I seen before, but can't remember where, wish I did.....I seen something where somebody put a capacitor in-line, I think they said it was to clean up the dc power, but I thought capacitors would be used to prevent surges. Wish I knew more about electricty, or had the $$$ for a good power supply. J


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## T-Jet Racer (Nov 16, 2006)

Jimmy49098 said:


> I seen before, but can't remember where, wish I did.....I seen something where somebody put a capacitor in-line, I think they said it was to clean up the dc power, but I thought capacitors would be used to prevent surges. Wish I knew more about electricty, or had the $$$ for a good power supply. J


you need to put an electrolitic cap across the 2 wires,as the voltage rises the cap charges then as it drops it discharges to add voltage back to the circuit. think of a/c as ripples on the ocean, then when you rectify it to d/c you chop the top of the waves off. 
......---dc---.............. ---dc---
---/.............\--------/.............\-------0 volts
this is what it looks like the top line is the d/c output. as you can see there is a rise then it chops it, then it falls off. The condenser tries to bleed off and fill in the gaps. I hope that helps.

ignore the periods ... I had to put them to keep the picture straight


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

The Tomy warts are 7 VA, so assuming 100% power factor correction, this would yield 7/22 = 0.318 amps. I connected an ammeter and got right around 0.3 amps with the car running. These are designed to make the car move and do so with maximum kiddie safety in mind. These are not intended for real slot car racing.


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## Scafremon (Dec 11, 2006)

AfxToo said:


> These are not intended for real slot car racing.


And anyone who doesn't bore out their wooden spool holes to precisely .267 dia. is not playing with real Tinkertoys.


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## T-Jet Racer (Nov 16, 2006)

AfxToo said:


> The Tomy warts are 7 VA, so assuming 100% power factor correction, this would yield 7/22 = 0.318 amps. I connected an ammeter and got right around 0.3 amps with the car running. These are designed to make the car move and do so with maximum kiddie safety in mind. These are not intended for real slot car racing.


Like I said, I will take your word for it. I just didn't think it would be less than 1. did you like my sine wave? without all the dots it just squished!

maybe we can get a sticky where we can dump all this type of info? It would be nice to have a reference to go to for this type of stuff.


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

> And anyone who doesn't bore out their wooden spool holes to precisely .267 dia. is not playing with real Tinkertoys


Exactly!

... and remove the little safety shields from underneath the cars I might add.


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## SwamperGene (Dec 1, 2003)

If you need cheap power, try a PC repair shop, ask if they have a box of old laptop "power bricks" (AC Charger/Adapter) you can rummage through. Just make sure they are DC output. 

You can find these in all sorts of voltages, and alot are 2A or better of very clean power. Older Fujitsi bricks seem to fall right in our area, around 17V-19V and 2 or more amps. If you can find matched one's for "one per lane" you can end up with a very well powered track fairly cheap. :thumbsup:


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## twolff (May 11, 2007)

SwamperGene said:


> If you need cheap power, try a PC repair shop, ask if they have a box of old laptop "power bricks" (AC Charger/Adapter) you can rummage through. Just make sure they are DC output.
> 
> You can find these in all sorts of voltages, and alot are 2A or better of very clean power. Older Fujitsi bricks seem to fall right in our area, around 17V-19V and 2 or more amps. If you can find matched one's for "one per lane" you can end up with a very well powered track fairly cheap. :thumbsup:



I had forgotten that I had collected a set of 4 such power bricks for my track a few years back. One per lane. I never got them wired up. I had enough "found money" and AG power supplies were in stock. The rest is history.

BTW: Most of the notebook PC supplies output terminals are regulated and light years ahead of std. wall warts.


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