Quick Power Supply Question

[T_Flip]

I have a 12V 20A power supply and an Artin 4 Lane track. The power supply is not one of the cool sexy ones like most people use. It is more of a steel cage if you will and has 9 screws on the back side (Ground, load, common to wire int eh AC and 3 each + and -). I am fairly certain that it is more than capable of handling the load but my question is, "is it too much?". I mean I know that the cars won't draw any more amps than they need but will they fly off the track if another cars wrecks out?

[ddyke]

Fuse the track in case there is a short.

[sidedraft]

Is your power supply adjustable? have you checked it with a meter, 20 amps at 12 v max output?, you prob, will get cars flying off with that many amps. How many amps per lane is it putting out?, Our MG power supply is 20 volts at 10 amps adjustable & our slot it powered cars run flat out at only 17v & 6amps on our 4 lane Carrera track,, no fly-offs yet. I'm sure someone else will chime in with more info. to help you out.

[HomeRacingWorld]

Your cars will not fly off. You have 20 amps supplying 4 lanes. Which is more than you will need unless you are running super hot commercial style motors. If you are using regular 'home racing" motors like the ones found in Carrera, Scalextric, etc you are just fine.

You said it correctly, the cars will only draw the amps they need. So no need for any individual lane measurements. So no, it isn't too much.

[nhdungeonracer]

[Florida_Slotter]

Without getting into all those engineering principles about EMF, Counter EMF and such, let's just keep it nice and simple.

The amount of voltage you have available on the slot car track will control the amount of speed that a slot car can run at, given the opportunity and space to get to that speed.

The amount of current you have available on the slot car track will control how quickly that slot car can get to that speed.

In the early days at our club, the track was powered by wall warts - one per lane, so we had a whopping 400 milliamps per lane to run on.

When we repowered the track and added a Pyramid Power Supply with 10 Amps for all four lanes, we went through a quantum leap in the amount of power available.

One of the cars at our facility is a TSRF chassis with the "Homeset" motor in it. Hey I've got commercial cars with that motor in it that run very well at commercial raceways. Well the car was very "soft" coming out of corners. That is when you went to "WOT" (Wide Open Throttle) the car accelerated, but not in the manner I was expecting to see. Well after we increased the amount of current (Amps) available to power the car by a factor of 25, that TSRF car literally "jumped" off the corner. Actually the person driving it did not expect the car to literally take off like a big bird and was slow to react to the car. That car still holds the long distance award for being airborne at our club. We had the voltage set the same as a wall wort at the time. We have since dropped it to 10.5 volts, rather then 14.8 volts.

I sure do hope this helps you understand the relationship between volts and amps.

As Ohm sez in his law,

or Amps (I) are equal to the available Voltage divided by the Resistance of the load.

[RichD]

It would be nice to know if that power supply is regulated. With a regulated power supply the voltage output will be constant even though the load varies. With even a very large unregulated power supply the voltage will change as the load changes. A slot car motor does not act like a resistor, except for an instant when it first starts up. You can check for regulation by connecting the power supply to a table lamp with a small light bulb and measuring the voltage. Switch to the largest light bulb that you have and measure the voltage again. You have to use old fashioned incandescent bulbs. If the voltage drops with a bigger load the power supply is not regulated and will not be ideal for slot racing. A car falling off will cause a voltage surge unless you add a voltage regulator like this one:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzLR42N ... =drive_web

[RazorJon]

I run 25 amps on a 4 lane Carrera so you will be fine, lets see some pictures of your track :text-bravo:

[sidedraft]

[RazorJon]

My track is not digital

[T_Flip]

Thank you for all the replies guys.