by RichD » Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:42 pm
With the AC2 system the cars will not be running on pure DC, what they are actually seeing is half wave rectified AC. With a regular set type power supply the incoming line level AC first gets stepped down, then a full wave rectifier inverts the negative half of each 360 degree cycle so you get four positive 90 degree pulses. With a half wave rectifier you lose the two negative pulses, so there is a 90 degree positive pulse, a 90 degree zero amplitude pulse, a 90 degree positive pulse and another 90 degree zero amplitude pulse for each cycle of 360 degrees. For a given AC input you will get less output with the AC2 system. Even with a full wave rectifier there is going to be an AC component to the output, with better power supplies there is a filter capacitor to smooth out out the AC, but there is usually some measurable ripple. With a half wave rectifier it would be much more difficult to filter out the AC component. In the case of the AC2 system your rectifier is the diode in the car as well as the one with the controller. Actually one car is running on two positive pulses per 360 degree cycle and the other is running on two negative pulses per 360 degree cycle.
The large amount of ripple is likely to cause the cars to run at least a little warmer than normal. You could have a problem with that if you also use powerful traction magnets like the older Scalextric cars had. I would not expect the motors to be damaged, but that might be a possibility with higher performance motors.