Using LOR for Electric Motors on Reindeer

[Guest guest]

I have seen on some of the forums that the use of LOR on servo motors will not work properly. I was wondering about the motors that are used on the reindeer's that allow movement of certain parts. Will the variation of voltage passing to these motors cause any issues or shorten their life?

Jerry

[Guest guest]

I have read to keep the motor on and have the lights on LOR only. I'm not sure how to do this. Maybe someone wil enlighten us both.

Michael B

[Guest guest]

Basically.. you have to run a always on circuit throughout the display on things that have to be on like the motors on those deer. I usually just hook this to a timer. Then you just run your LOR to the lights on the deer,etc. I hope that helps.

[Guest guest]

Exactly what brad said. so the deer will always be moving but not on. This way you do not burn out the motor by turning it on and off a few times a song...

[Guest guest]

Thanks Brad. I guess the best way for me is to use one channel to control the on and off of the motor. I will have the program to start the motor and then shut off, once the sequence is over, at the end of the song. I don't have any outlets that would be available to set up on a timer.

Thanks again for the assistance

Jerry

[Guest guest]

Is there a thread where someone has actually burned something up. I know motors and triac power control dont mix well but I really wonder if anyone has burned something up in real life. I would love to see the thread or hear about some real life failures.



When I get my LOR maybe I'll do an experiment and post the results.

[Guest guest]

I run a couple of motors of the LOR circuits without problems. This is done because to the short time the deer is acually on. During a song "Roudolph blow your horn" the deer in the sky comes on for about 20 seconds blowing his 30" horn ( his guy has had a personality adjustment to fit my sequence-after I backed over him with a truck). Anyway this unit ran succefully all last year.

Attached files

[Guest guest]

I can only see the Turn OFF and turn ON as the "dangerous to motors". Once ON the motor should be fine forever (but only if you have them set to FULL ON ...not shmmer or dim). Dimming would apply partial AC waveform and be bad but LOR says that if the channel is set to full on then a full AC wavefrom is applied so you should be able to run forever once its turned on.

Its the ons and offs that might be a problem. Triacs turn off at a voltage Zero crossing (at zero volts) but the current in an inductive circuit (motor) is out of phase by 90 degrees so It think this is where the problem is. I'm sure the guys at LOR can explain this problem exactly and the risks involved. I think an AC rated capacitor across the motor would solve all problems. They cost about 5 bucks though.

Adding a resistor in parallel will give the current a place to go after turn off so the max voltage induced would be reduced and I think this is what they have been recommending.

[Guest guest]

I hooked it up to the radio station sign channel because it is on throughout the entire display.

Zac

[Guest guest]

I too, have heard that an inductive load can be hard on a controller, but a resistor or string of lights on the circut could help. True? False?

[Guest guest]

LOR told me that they were not worried about their controller with inductive loads but they were more worried about the inductive load being damaged (motors).

LOR uses snubberless triacs and so they have snubbers built in to protect them from volage spikes caused by partial wave ON's and OFF's of the AC voltage/current.

[Guest guest]

Has anyone actually burned out one of these little motors by controlling them with a TRIAC? Or is this something that was perceived might be a problem because the motor is an inductor? The TRIAC’s that come with the LOR boards are snubberless, meaning that they have built-in circuitry to absorb the voltage spike from anything containing an inductor; so the LOR board is protected. The motors that you a talking about are such small inductors that I seriously doubt would cause any problems even if the TRIAC’s had no snubbers, unless maybe you connect it directly to a LOR board with minimum wire length. Wire in between will provide some snubber like properties to high voltage spikes. I don’t see how the motor is going to be damaged from a TRIAC controller as long as the channel is only on or off with no dimming of any value. You also have to be careful that you don’t turn it on and off rapidly since this would cause the motor to get hot. This is due to the higher current required just to get the motor running.

If you live in an area that gets below zero, then a frozen motor could burn out when it is turned on. A locked motor draw much more current. This would happen no matter what you used to turn it on.