New Bachmann can motors - substandard?

[skipgear]

  As many may have noticed, this past week, there has been a pretty heated discussion on the new can motors that have been showing up in recent Bachmann N scale loco's both on the Atlas forums and Trainboard. It was discovered that the advertised 5 pole / skew wound motors in the C&O H-5 (2-6-6-2) was really a 3 pole straight wound motor. This in itself is not a big deal to me as the loco ran very good as is. As long as the loco runs well, I don't care what motor is in it. I defended Bachmann's choice because it has allowed us to have some very nice new releases. Unfortunately, I can no longer take that side.

  The problem with the motor is they are showing signs of an unusually short life span. This is the reason it was discovered to not be as advertised. The motor in question died in under 20 hours. It was thought to be a fluke and was replaced by another motor ordered from Bachmann.  It also died in the same time frame. When it did, the owner took it apart to see why and found that it was a 3 pole armature and had failed because the comutator had worn through. The pictures of this started the debate and discussion.

  There are currently 3 others running their 2-6-6-2's to see if they suffer the same fate. Unfortunately, one more has just died at the 24 hour mark. The other motors aren't that far along quite yet, except for one that had been disassembled for inspection before the test, it seems to be running well.

  In a reply from Bachmann, it is claimed that this new can motor is a smaller/better alternative than previous motors. Please exlpain how? Why can I get more than 3000 hours out of a $50 standard line 0-6-0 before it wears the side rods or flanges off of the wheels, yet a $200 2-6-6-2 barely makes it 24 hours? I have had an 0-6-0 last for 6 months, 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in our store display with simple, periodic cleaning of the loco. This is impossible with the new can motors, you can't get in them.

  These motors need to be addressed. This is not an acceptable level of quality, especially for a "Spectrum" level product. If you ran your train an hour a day, it wouldn't last a month. I often will run 3-4 hours or more straight on a train show weekend. A couple weekends and it seems a loco with one of these motors would be worn out.

  I work at a HobbyTown and order the model railroad merchandise for our store and influence the 5 others owned by us. It is going to be real hard to even think about ordering more of these loco's with the new motors in them until the problem is addressed. I don't want to see customers coming back in a month complaining that their loco has died.

The current loco's that I know of with the new can motor include:

HHP8
H16-44
2-6-6-2
4-8-2 Heavy Mountain
44T
DD40Ax

[C855B]

Hi, Tony -

Not yet having one in front of me, what is the size of this motor? From the pictures on "the other forum", it's looking like 10x12x20.

One observation reading through all the messages - it may... or may not... be mostly an issue with the 2-6-6-2. Nobody seems to have experienced the early failure bug on anything else. I'm not saying that it isn't going to be a problem on the other locos which use it, but the nature of the failure seems more related to the extra load of the 2-6-6-2 mechanism. This heavier baseline load could easily be contributing to a higher constant operating floor temperature for the motor, and this is what is eating the commutator.

What is the availability of the Mashimas in 10x12x20 or even 10x12x24? Not to take any responsibility away from Bachmann, but if I'm going to pour $40-50 in detail parts into what appears will be a fleet of several Centennials, I don't want to be risking that I will lose that work just to return to the factory for a motor failure - I'd rather just upgrade, shrug my shoulders and forget about it.

...mike

[David Leonard]

If the issue seems to be only with the 2-6-6-2's, because of the heavy load (and we know that running motors under heavy load / high voltage wears them out faster), you probably don't need to worry about the Centennials, since they have two motors.

[skipgear]

I don't think load is the issue. The motors running under load (pulling a train) are only pulling 90-100 milliamps. If load was the culprit, my Hvy Mountain should be a gonner by now. It has been through 3 train shows, each one a couple hours long, pulling 40-50 coal cars, or a 20 car troop train, both near it's maximum pulling power. As a matter of fact, I may disect that one tonight and see what it looks like inside.

BTW - Electric motors are not something new to me, I have been racing electric radio control cars since the 80's and flying electric radio control planes for the past 5 years. Both are dependent on high quality motors. The trend is toward brushless motors now, something that would be very interesting in a model railroading application. I think Marklin/Trix is already experimenting with it.

I also want to say, that without Bachmann, my steam fleet would be cut in half or more. I want Bachmann to continue producing the steam that nobody else seems to want to touch, but I expect them to last more than 24 hours.


Edit: mis quoted amp draw

[mmagliaro]

I am testing several for some friends and model train colleagues.
The first one has failed at about 18 hours.

This ran on simple DC (no pulse) at 10 volts.
The current draw was 110 ma when I started the test, and reached a minimum of about 90.
It was an almost-new engine (perhaps run an hour or two at the most and then
shelved by the owner).

I concur with Tony, 90 ma is not excessive.  And I was running this on a loop of Kato Unitrack
pulling NO cars at all.  So load is not the problem.

[C855B]

Point taken on the 90 mA - that's not much load at all.

What I couldn't tell from the pictures is whether the commutator is worn down, or is distorted, such as would occur if the core was softening from heat and causing the segments to collapse. The picture with the visible contact wear on the brush fingers hints at some sort of dimensional deviation.

[skipgear]

I have now seen a few pictures of the failed motors disassembled for inspection. I think the issue with the new can motor is not a design problem but an assembly problem. The ones that are dying so far a becoming clogged with carbon from the brushes. This leads me to believe that either the spring tension is too strong on the brushes, or the comutators have not been properly trued before assembly and are chewing up the brushes in the break in process.

I'm going to try to get time to pull mine apart and see for myself. I have two of the 2-6-6-2's, one with about 10 hours on it, one with barely any time at all. It will give me a good comparison between them and allow me to tweak and fine tune the brushes for better performance. Hopefully it will give some more insight into the issue.

Max has reported on the Atlas forum that the motor that he dissasembled and cleaned has now been running free on the bench for 3 days and it has stabilized at around 25 ma current draw. That is encouraging news. Now if they were just assembled properly to begin with, we wouldn't have to tear one apart to make it better.

[jwoj69]

  As many may have noticed, this past week, there has been a pretty heated discussion on the new can motors that have been showing up in recent Bachmann N scale loco's both on the Atlas forums and Trainboard. It was discovered that the advertised 5 pole / skew wound motors in the C&O H-5 (2-6-6-2) was really a 3 pole straight wound motor. This in itself is not a big deal to me as the loco ran very good as is. As long as the loco runs well, I don't care what motor is in it. I defended Bachmann's choice because it has allowed us to have some very nice new releases. Unfortunately, I can no longer take that side.

  The problem with the motor is they are showing signs of an unusually short life span. This is the reason it was discovered to not be as advertised. The motor in question died in under 20 hours. It was thought to be a fluke and was replaced by another motor ordered from Bachmann.  It also died in the same time frame. When it did, the owner took it apart to see why and found that it was a 3 pole armature and had failed because the comutator had worn through. The pictures of this started the debate and discussion.

  There are currently 3 others running their 2-6-6-2's to see if they suffer the same fate. Unfortunately, one more has just died at the 24 hour mark. The other motors aren't that far along quite yet, except for one that had been disassembled for inspection before the test, it seems to be running well.

  In a reply from Bachmann, it is claimed that this new can motor is a smaller/better alternative than previous motors. Please exlpain how? Why can I get more than 3000 hours out of a $50 standard line 0-6-0 before it wears the side rods or flanges off of the wheels, yet a $200 2-6-6-2 barely makes it 24 hours? I have had an 0-6-0 last for 6 months, 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in our store display with simple, periodic cleaning of the loco. This is impossible with the new can motors, you can't get in them.

  These motors need to be addressed. This is not an acceptable level of quality, especially for a "Spectrum" level product. If you ran your train an hour a day, it wouldn't last a month. I often will run 3-4 hours or more straight on a train show weekend. A couple weekends and it seems a loco with one of these motors would be worn out.

  I work at a HobbyTown and order the model railroad merchandise for our store and influence the 5 others owned by us. It is going to be real hard to even think about ordering more of these loco's with the new motors in them until the problem is addressed. I don't want to see customers coming back in a month complaining that their loco has died.

The current loco's that I know of with the new can motor include:

HHP8
H16-44
2-6-6-2
4-8-2 Heavy Mountain
44T
DD40Ax

Before spectrum line, Bachmann engines did not have a lot of detail. they were loud, scale speed was note. But they were known to run almost forever. If not abused, or overload nothing would brake them. Hearing about my beloved 2-6-6-2 running for about 24 hours calls for alarm! If would not be for new Bachmann steamers, i would have to give up my trains.
I feel strongly that Bachmann Should address recall on any issued engines with that kind almost scandal wear. New Spectrum diesels and steam engines bringing a lot more new people to Bachmann. It would be a sham to loose as for poor quality. Mister Bachmann please help. Show us that You care and You want help us,  before it's too late.
ps
i also have 2-6-6-2 run few times for few minutes. I admire this engine as a masterpiece.

Please Mister Bachman, help us!