How to secure 1-72 screws into Atlas frogs? I've read earlier posts about flipping the turnouts upsdie down and inserting the screws from the bottom. The problem is they fall out when I flip them over. I'm usin a pine vice to drill them. Use a screw driver that has can create more torque?
Someone wrote that there's no need for first using a 1-72 tap drill. What about using CA or soldering the screws to the hole on the frog? A tiny amount of solder might work and I can heat it to remove the screw later.
Thanks,
Lee
Hi Lee,
I use the same size screws, from the bottom. They can be installed without drilling anything. A 1-72 fits the hole in the frog, but you need a steady hand and a good screwdriver to thread it in. You may be wobbleing a little too much. that opens up the hole and the screw falls out. I just use a tap. To power the frog, I cut a piece of .020 brass shim about 1.5"X.25", make a hole at one end big enough for the screw then solder your feeder wire to the shim.
Phil, CEO, Eastern Sierra Pacific Railroad. We know where you are going, before you do!
More talk here:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/744/t/253180.aspx
Good Luck, Ed
All of my turnouts are older, before Atlas had their production difficulties and moved to a different factory and all that (remember Code 83 track was in short supply for a while - mine are all from prior to that). As such, a 1-72 screw was able to just screw in, no tapping, no drilling anything out. New ones MIGHT be a different size, in which case I would recommend a 1-72 nut, bolt, and a ring terminal.
You cannot use glue to hold the screw in, glue is an insulator. Plus, heat CA with a soldering iron and it gives off nasty fumes you don't want to be anywhere near.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
A concept:
Find out the size of the existing hole. The easiest way is to insert increasing larger drill bits until the aha! moment.
Drill through with the next size larger tap drill.
Tap.
An appropriately sized screw will now easily thread into the hole.
Ed
rrinkerNew ones MIGHT be a different size
I have 3 new ones, bought this year from the big internet stores, so they aren't old stock. The hole is the size of a 1/16" drill bit or 0.062" The major diameter of a 1-72 screw is 0.073"
My local hardware store has a box of "micro screws and nuts", with compartments. Every size screw and nut is mixed in with every other size screw and nut. Maybe the OP has 1-80 screws or maybe it's a case of too much torque.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Mine were all #4, the 1-72 screw bit in nicely in the hole. Any more and I would have had to drill it out, it was just ont he edge of drilling and risk it tearing out vs having to apply too much force to the screw and tearing it. They weren't even self tapping, just ordinary HO-bits 1-72 brass screws. I did them off layout upside down both so the screw head where the wire soldered would be hidden but also so the frog was supported by the solid workbench when trying to run the screw in.
The layout before was almost all #6, and I didn;t even think about powering the frog, and I had no issues with any locos that ran. I put a screw and a wire in every turnout on this last layout and then never hooked any of them up because no locos had problems with the #4. I'd probbaly think diffeently with a #8, the frog looks as long as the wheelbase of my little Plymouth switcher - but that has a stay alive in it so it won't stall either. At any rate I'm going with Peco this time around and powering them all (Electrofrog) regardless of size.
you could consider soldering a 30 or 32 gauge wire to the frog using the process outlined below. The bead will be very small and easily "blackened". The wire will easily handle loco current draws. The frog is a "blackened" Zn die casting.
1. tools: 15W wedge tip soldering iron, 0.020" eutectic tin-lead
solder, resin flux, 30/32 gauge wire, small flat bladed
screwdriver (preferably nickel plated)
2. Use screwdriver to gouge frog web until u get clean metal
3. dab a little flux onto gouged area
4. Jam your 15W wedge tip soldering iron into the gouged area.
5. feed 0.020" eutectic tin-lead solder into gouged area
6. remove iron as soon as you see solder flowing into gouged area.
This technique also works on MicroEngineering Frogs which are a
cast nickel-silver type of alloy with about 10% Manganese added in.
I could be wrong but I don't think you can melt ties with the above
technique as long as you keep the iron off of the ties.
I think the key to the above process is the small diameter solder wire
which limits the heat flow away from the joint.
I have the impression that Atlas metal frogs are made from nonsolderabilium. If so, the ties will definitely melt as you continue to wait for the solder to bond.
I consider myself pretty good at soldering (no problem soldering feeders to the rail, no problem soldering rail joints, never used a heat sink of any sort for that stuff) and the one and only time I attempted to solder to one of those Atlas frogs, it was a complete disaster. That's after polishing off the blackening. Flux or no flux, the sodler just did not stick to that metal they used, and it takes very little heat to pop the frog completely off - no ties were melted, the frog just popped loose! I was able to snap it back in place, and a few droops of CA made sure it would staty. Trains ran over it for several years with no problems. So yeah, soldering to those frogs (unless the material used has changed since the early 2000's when I tried it) is probably not a good idea.
I've never melted the ties while soldering Atlas frogs. You have to try it using the EXACT process above. The frogs are Zinc. I will try to post a foto.
Thanks everyone for all the help with the screws. They are going into the hole next to the frogs with a screwdrive. The screws fit into the holes or I first broaden them slightly with a drill bit. What a relief that this is resolved.
I put the screws in from the top and plan to paint them black so they blend. This arrangement enables me to solder a wire to the screw and attach to the buss. To make things smooth, I cut out a small divet into the cork for the screw.
You went from the screws falling out to having to make a larger hole. Did you move up to a larger screw?
Ah, so the do still sell those bars separately. They used to be part of the Snap Relay, but a long time ago someone asked and had an Atlas part number for them. Certainly the easiest, if not the prettiest, way to do this - the wire can be soldered to the bar at the workbench, the the thing bolted to the frog, no need to apply a soldering iron anywhere near the turnout.
There is even a more simple way to do it, which I have done and have mentioned on the forums before. My layout was built in the early 80's. With mostly all Atlas track, with undertable switch machines on all #6 turnouts and snap relays for frog power and signal lights along with control panel lights. The #4's I use are all manual with dead frogs and some of the electric #6's had dead frogs on the crossovers. They were already ballasted so I did not want to pull them up to insert the brass bus bar for powering the frogs. So I drilled at hole the same size as the hole in the side of the frog. Stripped a solid 24 gauge wire about a inch stuck in down the hole in the frog and put a 90 degree bend in the end of the wire so that it would rest on the side of the hole and took the 1-72 machine screw that comes with the brass bus bar, put some pressure on the screw driver and screwed it right into the hole with the wire.......the screw threads worked just like a self tap screw and I was able to have a nice tight fit. Now all the frogs are powered that were already ballasted. I did about 20 that way and they work like a charm. When I built the layout, none of the juicer's, Tortoises, CDU's, were even out yet!
You can see the black screw next to the frog.......never bothered to hide it......You can hardly see them anyway, on the layout:
This photo is a little blurry, but You can see the screw head next to the frog on this crossover, done the same way with the screw:
You can barely make out the screw head on this one:
There is no reason to have to solder to a screw or wire, doing it the way I did.
Take Care!
Frank
Most Atlas Mark 2,3, and 4 turnout frogs are die-cast zinc which is colloquially called "pot metal". I determined this by using X-Ray fluoresence analysis. I solder these die-cast zinc frogs using the process described above and my joints are good "tuggable" joints. At least some of the Mark 4 #8 C83 and C100 frogs are nickel-silver (go figure) and they are also readily solderable using the process above. So are the micro-engineering frogs which are a nickel-silver variant with about 10% manganese. I am not the only one who has reported soldering to the ME frogs but it does seem as if I am the only model railroader to date who has reported success soldering to the Atlas die-cast zinc frogs. Other modelers have reported success in soldering to die-cast zinc so I am not completely "out there"
http://modeltech.tripod.com/soldering.htm
IMHO the main problem with soldering to zinc frogs is the relative size of the frogs which draws heat away from the joint area. The heat draw problem is compounded when you use "large diameter" solder feed wire which is also a pretty effective heat sink. I find 0.020 solder wire "ok". I can't say whether a slightly larger size wouldn't work also but I stick with what works for me. Try it..I think you'll be successful also.
Semi necro'd thread but all the way at the beginnign the OP completely misunderstood - no one suggested drilling holes in the frog itself, that's not necessary on any Atlas turnout. The 4's and 6's have a hole alongside the frog for attachment of the Snap Relay connecting hardware. I still can;t EASILY solder to those things even with a proper soldering sation and fine solder, no matter how much I wire brush it with a Dremel and add flux - it's definitely not easy and given that so many have issues soldering a pair of wires together, I would not recommend anyone without extensive soldering experience even attempt it, especially when you can run in a brass screw and solder to it super easily. On my #4's it was a 1-72 screw, no tapping needed, just screwed itself in - they weren;t even specifically self-tapping screws, the frog metal is that soft.
On the OP's #8's - there is already a tabl outside of the rails that is brass and easily solderable. Shouldn;t even need a screw, although the use of the Snap Relay hardware may make it easier for those with limited soldering skill because you can solder a wire to the brass strip at the workbench, where excess heat isn't going to hurt anything, then take it to the turnout and bolt it to the provided hole. The same can be done for the 4's and 6's, actually.
The biggest problem I had with the #6 was that even a small amount of heat in the frog caused the whole frog assembly to pop off the plastic tie base. Just not worth the risk, given how expensive turnouts are. Not when there are other options that require no heat to be applied around the turnout itself.
I recently found an old (1954) book called "Solder" By Clifford L. Barber, at the time, Research Director for Kester Solder.
"Zinc,if clean or in a moderate state of oxidation, can be soldered with a good "Activated" Resin, but if badly oxidized, requires a Chloride or Organic type flux."
I can't sort out all those fluxes, but I can see that it might be good to clean the surface of oxides and and other gunk before attempting soldering.
Since the current ones are blackened, and that just makes it next to impossible to solder to - same with stuff like the weathered ME track - you need to clean off the blackening before there is ANY chance of solder sticking.
A highly reactive flux is usually code word for acid based flux - really a bad idea for electrical connections unless THOROUGHLY cleaned off afterwards.
It's like I said - maybe you CAN successfully solder directly to the frog with exacting techiques - but seeing as how most people around here fear soldering, or just simply aren;t very experienced with it, I would not recommend attempting it especially since there are much easier ways that even the most ham-fisted solderer can't damage the turnout itself. Maybe I should have saved some before I junked my old layout, just to try different ways, but since I'm going with Peco and they don;t use pot metal AND they already have a wire tack welded to the frog rails which can be used to supply power - I have no reason to bother at this point.