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Hex Frog Juicer is very cool

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  • Member since
    February 2002
  • From: Reading, PA
  • 30,002 posts
Posted by rrinker on Saturday, January 2, 2010 10:37 PM

 Well it depends on which aspect of 'dcc friendly' you mean - if it's the shorting of the stock rail to the closure rail, the frog juicer own't help - but proper wheel guage normally fixes that one. The advantage of the frog juicer is that it switches on detection of a short - with Tortoise contacts, or using microswitches, you can be switching polarity while a point rail is against the 'wrong' stock rail - causing a short. The Frog Juicer does nothing until a loco runs on to the turnout and THEN matches polarity (phase).

                       --Randy

 


Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's

 

Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.

  • Member since
    October 2004
  • From: Richmond, Texas
  • 393 posts
Posted by RDG1519 on Saturday, January 2, 2010 7:13 PM

Thanks Mark,

What it looks like is that you wire the bus to one end of the card and than the individual frogs to the other inputs. From what the video and the website indicate you also no longer need to worry about DCC friendly, electrofrog or insulfrog anymore when using these? Is this what you understand from this?

If so this is great and the price per frog is not bad.

Chris

Great grandson of John Kiefer, Engineman Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, 1893 to 1932
  • Member since
    October 2007
  • 97 posts
Hex Frog Juicer is very cool
Posted by markalan on Saturday, January 2, 2010 12:05 PM

I just installed and hooked up one of these to switch the polarity on the frogs of two Peco 3 way turnouts that go to staging at each end of my 6x2 shelf layout.  That's 3 frogs for each turnout.  Each juicer will switch 6 frogs.  I've run my Proto 0-8-0 and S1 through the turnouts and the Juicer works like a charm.  Very, very cool.  The locomotive just keeps running, there is absolutely no pause in the sound.

If anyone has wondered if these do what they say they do, I can tell you, for me, they do.  And a 3 way turnout is a pretty good test since the first two frogs are so close together.

Here is a link to a video.  Just click on the video tab under the word Polarity in the title.


http://www.handlaidtrack.com/hex-frog-juicer-automatic-frog-polarity-switcher-p-8579.php

 

 

Mark Alan

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