Converting Kato chassis to DCC

[jimowers]

There has been a lot of questions arising from the conversion of the Kato Shorty chassis to DCC so I posted up some of the article I wrote some while ago in OO9 News to explain the process. As a courtesy I should of course post similar on this forum as it is the home of OO9 modelling as follows:

Converting the Kato

[Jeff Schumaker]

Jim,

That seems pretty straight forward. Can you tell me why you used tape to insulate the motor from the frame, rather than reusing the brown board?

Jeff S.

[Scottish Modeller]

Jim,

That seems pretty straight forward. Can you tell me why you used tape to insulate the motor from the frame, rather than reusing the brown board?

Jeff S.

Hi Jeff,

If Jim has done the same as I have (and he appears to have)

The board is used, not discarded.

Using the board keeps the rest of the electrics in place without any further modifications.

In theory - chip dependent - you could get away without using insulating tape to cover the now exposed circuit on the board.

Prudence says use tape - just in case!

You don't want a random short circuit to fry the chip - do you?

Thanks

[jimowers]

Jim,

That seems pretty straight forward. Can you tell me why you used tape to insulate the motor from the frame, rather than reusing the brown board?

Jeff S.

Scottish Modeller is quite right and you will see it is quite clear in the pictures how I reused the board.

You will see that the brown board is reversed in its position so that the circuitry is disabled whilst the contact strips remain locked in place. This seemed the most logical thing to do since they are very delicate.

My modelling philosophy is to reduce risk wherever possible, hence the tape.

[Jeff Schumaker]

I get it, you flipped the board over.

Jeff S.

[Hugh Norwood]

Do you really need to turn the circuit board over? You have removed the motor contacts, after all....