Monday, January 9, 2012

Adding screw terminals to Uhlenbrock 67810

The only bad things about this servo decoder are:

1) Not Loconet communication, directly connected to DCC Loop
2) It has no terminals to connect wires coming from switch frogs. You have to attach them using a kind of plastic caps to keep the wire in touch with the decoder terminals. But this caps don't hold it properly and produce false contacts between the wires and the decoder, it's really a botch.

There is nothing to do with the first issue, but you can solder very easily screw terminals instead of using those plastic caps. For each servo decoder you will need 2 double terminals and 4 triple terminals. These terminals must be of 3,5 mm gauge.  I bought them in RS-ONLINE, and references are:

* Double screw terminals: 648-8484
* Triple screw terminals: 648-8513

That's the result with the screw terminals soldered: