Smoker Fan Control Unit

[Adrian Harris]

I have now finished the first production run for these fan speed control units and am ready to take orders.



The unit plugs into the current Armortek smoke option pack wiring loom, in place of the solid state relay. The King Tiger smoke option pack includes two fans, and I am currently working on a method to simplify the installation of this module with this configuration.

An additional connection links into the Benedini TBS5 sound module. The TBS5 can either be a bare board or as part of the Armortek Amplifier Module, though there is a caveat to using the latter.

The module takes its power from the wiring loom and the left hand LED shows when it is powered up. The right hand LED shows the status of the fan and the brightness is proportional to the speed of the fan.

When the engine start sound is played on the Benedini unit, the fan spins up to full speed for approximately 3 seconds, then drops down to half speed whilst the engine is idling. If the engine rev-up sound is played, the fan spins up to full speed for the duration of the sound.

On moving off, the fan spins up to full speed for approximately 3 seconds, then runs proportionally to the speed of the model.

As the vehicle slows to a stop, the fan spins up to full speed again for approximately 3 seconds, then reverts to half speed whilst the engine is idling.

When the engine stop sound is played, the fan stops running.

The power, fan and sound connections are colour coded and the unit features reverse polarity protection to prevent damage if it should be wired incorrectly.

Please email me at sales@armortekaddict.uk for orders, or if you have any further questions.

Adrian.

[Fabrice Le Roux]

Adrian,

What is the caveat with the A'tek module? Just mulling options for the Cent..

Thanks
Fabrice

[Nick Farrugia]

Hi Adrian
This is good news will be e,mailing you today .
regards ,,,,,,,,,,,,,nick

[Adrian Harris]

Hi Fabrice - good to see you and the M32B3 yesterday

The caveat is that the brown control wire needs to push onto one of the pins of the Benedini TBS5, and in some of the earlier Armortek Amplifier modules, the connector for the TBS5 masks the pin.

I've spoken to MarkW about it and it seems that only the early sales of the Amplifier module are likely to be affected, and there is a workaround, it just means it's not quite as plug-and-play as I'd hoped for.

Adrian.

[James Wright]

Hello Adrian,

This sounds fantastic. Have you made a video of the control unit in action?

Kind regards,

James

[Adrian Harris]

Hi James.

This is the unit running with the original Armortek smoke unit:



This is the unit running with a modified Armortek smoke unit:



I replaced the stock fan with an uprated version, plus had a new lid cut with much larger aperture for the fan:

http://www.armortek.co.uk/Forum3b/downl ... d=1114&t=1

If there's enough interest I could get some more of these lids made up

This is the unit running with the current small smoke unit and high power radial fan:



Adrian.

[James Wright]

Thanks for the information Adrian. I've sent you a PM.

Regards,

James

[peterbarclay]

hi i have just started building my late tiger1 .please send me price of your fan unit plus shipping . peterbarclay0@gmail.com

[Adrian Harris]

Hi Peter.

Thanks for your interest, I've sent you an email with the details.

Regards

Adrian.

[Kevin Hunter]

Hi Adrian
Impressive looking stuff. I'm new to Armortek however, and don't appreciate the subtleties between their standard smoke unit and yours. Are you (or anyone for that matter) able to enlighten me ?
Have a Centurion reserved and hope start building soon, so finding out as much as I can about options, mods and all that stuff that the members on here seem to know so much about.
Thanks
Kevin

[Adrian Harris]

Hi Kevin.

The standard Armortek smoke unit is a small machined aluminium box which contains a 24v heating element in a brass tube, which is surrounded by a piece of high temp plumbers matting. This in turn is soaked with smoke fluid, baby oil etc.

When switched on, the element heats up the cloth, and this causes the fluid to smoke.

A fan is fitted so as to blow air through the box and out of the exhausts. The fan is wired to one of the supplies to the tank drive motors, through a bridge rectifier and a solid state relay. The bridge rectifier ensures that the fan runs the right way whether the tank is going forwards or backwards. The relay supplies full power to the fan once the drive motor supply has reached a few volts, to you don't need the tank to be running at full pelt to get full smoke. The bridge rectifier and sold state relay are relatively new additions to the set up.

My module slots into the wiring loom in place of the bridge rectifier and relay and also connects to the sound card.

With the standard setup, the smoke only works when you operate one or both of the transmitter sticks. It is possible to get the smoke belch on engine start sound with the standard setup, but it takes quite a deft touch.

With my module, the fan operates under the control of the sound card, not the motor drive system. This means you can turn on the smoke element and then start the engine sounds and have it idling and smoking without needing to touch the transmitter sticks.

At the moment I'm working late nights, which has prevented me from getting these units shipped out, and I must thank everyone for their patience. I have some days leave coming up so hope to have all the ordered units shipped then.

Adrian.

[Kevin Hunter]

Thanks for the additional info Adrian. I got a sense of this from your initial post on this thread. I was more interested in the videos posted showing the differences with updated fans, larger apertures and such. I'm assuming this just enables more smoke volume, or faster flowing smoke rather than drifting from the exhausts? To the uninitiated it isn't obvious in the video clips
Thanks for your patience
Kevin

[Adrian Harris]

The first videos show an older design of Armortek smoke module, which was larger in size. You're correct in that my changes were to effect greater and faster smoke throughput.

The last video shows the current stock smoke module and fan, linked to my module to control the timing of the smoke, but with no alterations to increase smoke speed or volume.

The new modules feature a machined lid which isn't easy to update or replace with a different model. I have looked at making a different design lid for it but I believe that the smaller size of the box may mean that increasing the airflow may just result in lowering the temperature of the element, leading to a net reduction in smoke output.

Adrian

[Kevin Hunter]

Thanks Adrian. Will be in touch i'm sure.
Kevin

[Pierluigi Patri]

Hi Adrian.
When we look at the videos of the WW II we can see there is plenty of smoke when the motor starts and increases everytime the rounds increase. When the engine comes up to a regular speed or slows there is no smoke (or only a little).
The smoke starts again when there is a subsequent acceleration.
By your Smoker Fan Control Unit is it possible to stop the smoke output when the engine runs at the same numbers of RPM for a time ?

Regards
Pierluigi