Friday, February 13, 2015

Amazing electronics

CDUSetting up Edgeworth last week, I nudged one of the buttons on the control panel before I'd plugged the layout in to the mains supply.

To my surprise, a point changed.

This means that the Capacitor Discharge Unit (CDU) has held enough charge to throw a point since the last exhibition.

In October.

It's held this charge for over 4 months. Maybe I'm being silly, but that seems pretty impressive for a device that costs less than 14 quid.

1 comment:

Frank Collins said...

Just goes to prove the quality of MERG components, for a capacitor to hold its charge for that length of time they obviously have very low leakage. It obviously caused you no problem but there could be a situation where a charged capacitor could cause a problem. Especially on high voltage power supplies.
I would suggest a suitable resistor wired across the capacitor to ensure the capacitor discharges quickly after power down thus preventing any unwanted movement of points etc.
I usually use a 2K2 resistor and LED in series across the capacitors in my CDUs, The LED then serves as a "CDU Ready" indicator on the control panel.