To update this, when I posted this my dealer's website showed two in stock and I ordered them. A couple days later he e-mailed me explaining they were to be in his latest shipment, but were not. So they are not here yet, but their release is imminent.

Ever since I got back into this hobby a year and a half ago, ESU has been talking about a permanent magnet for the SLFCMs used in the 3015 and it's derivatives. I finally grew weary of waiting and have decided to make my own.


So I bought some replacement field coils




Fabricated a jig to hold the pieces as the glue dried






Cut a section out of the field coil for a magnet. The lathe makes the cut square to both halves of the field coil allowing maximum contact to both sides of the magnet. The two stacked cut off wheels matched to within a few thousands of an inch the width of my magnet.






Turned some aluminum sleeves on my lathe



Glued it together in the jig




Tested it in my spare 3015 motor




Then installed it into a 36159 and added the ESU decoder




It now runs much, much better than it did with the old Super 6080 decoder and field coil.
Two more to go. They will get sound too.

Edited by user 25 March 2015 13:18:43(UTC)  | Reason: Added picture

I'm surprised the conservative collectors haven't knocked this excellent job back.
I do get emails from time to time, calling me a butcher and murderer when they see what I've done to my older locos e.g. TM 800 & RM 800 but there are 2 distinguished differences, they are not that rare, they are not worth a million and at least they get another chance to run on a digital layout.

The things you can do when you put your mind to it. congratulations.

John

Edited by user 21 August 2013 12:26:14(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Thank you all for the kind words. Very much appreciated.

I am still impressed with how much better it runs. The jerky, stop-start, hickup laiden slow speed operation is gone. I know the load control in the ESU decoder makes a lot of difference, but I think the permanent magnet also plays an important roll. With an electro-magnet like a field coil, the power of the magnetic field is determined by the amount of current flowing through the field coil. At slow speed, this current is by necessity very low. Consequently, the magnetic field the armature has to operate against is very low. With a permanent magnet you have a constant powerful magnetic field for the armature to work against.

Hi, if anybody is interested by converting their Märklin loco (3015) to digital, here is a manfacturer who supplies the magnet and the coil

http://www.morep.ch/

regards.,

John

Jacques , have a good red to celebrate.

OGN

Well done Matt.

Nn