good now that's covered, how can we find a good replacement, something with a lot better crawl speed, I know right now mine is parked, cause it runs like ^ #@!! I have a lot better other locos that i use for switching. did we ever do a thread on replacement motors?
Yeah.... um, a Mashima 1015 would be a better motor. It is about the same size, and it would probably have more
torque and a lower starting speed. It has a 1.5mm shaft, so you would have to adapt that somehow.
Personally, I'd run the motor and gently grind the shaft down a little with a diamond stone or drum held against it - works quite well actually.
What Chris said is pretty much my answer to Peteski's question: The Mashimas are 5-pole skew-wound motors
and they have a lot of power and low RPM. What makes them better? Well a 5-pole skew is going to get
you smoother low speed than a 3-pole straight-wound. Will it have more torque? I don't know. I only
know it's a darn powerful motor for its size.
The 1015's specs are here:
www.hollywoodfoundry.com/MHK1015.htm?id=32A maximum power output of 0.35 W compares to, say, a Faulhaber 1016's max power of 0.36 W. That's mighty
impressive. It won't be able to deliver as much torque at lower revs as the Faulhaber, but it's still a darn
powerful motor.
There is a little footnote under these specs posted at Hollywood Foundry that says, "Courtesy of the Eighteen Millimeter Society" Elsewhere in their pages, they say this:
"We have gone to the trouble of producing drawings for each type of motor, even though Mashima themselves do not provide this information. We also publish both the official Mashima motor specifications and an independent set of specifications and performance figures produced by the Eighteen Millimeter Gauge Society, for which we are grateful."
As for the Bachmann 2-8-0 motor: That is a good motor. I have a few. But I do not think it has as much power
as the Mashima 1015 and although it is a little shorter, it is a little bulkier. The 1015 fits easier into small models.
Remember, the Mashima is a closed can while the Bachmann is open-frame. That allows the Mashima to
have magnets that more completely surround the armature and get closer to it, which should allow it to
produce more power. Also, doing a little digging, I found it stated that the Mashima 10mm motors use
neodymium magnets. I'll see if I can verify this. If that's true, that would be the ballgame right there. That's how Maxon started beating Faulhaber in the power competition before Faulhaber started using neodymium (some of there's still use samarium cobalt, which is a "rare earth", but does not generate as strong a magnetic field as neodymium).
I have a "Torque Watch" coming on order. I finally broke down and bought one. So soon I will be able to test
the Mashima vs the MP15 vs a Bachmann vs a Faulhaber and report what the real torque numbers are.
