VIESSMANN 5172 - HO SCALE ELECTRIC ROLL UP DOORS - Assembly, electronics, and modifications

[@ModelingSteelinHO]

Thank you for sharing this roll up door. Very cool detail that adds just a bit more realism and operation. Didn't know Kibri had been bought out. Happy it is still going under Viessmann.

[@mussersail]

Thanks. I didn’t know until recently either. It seems a lot of German model train manufacturers struggled in the last decade or so. VIESSMANN moved all the production of Kibri and Vollmer kits to their own factories in Hungary and Romania, which I guess makes it economically feasible.

[@ModelingSteelinHO]

@mussersail I wonder how hard it would be to petition Kibri to make North American vehicles ? Vollmer makes some neat kits too. Have you heard of Auhagan ? German kits but some can be made American looking. Boiler Works comes to mind. Stunning brick building kit. I have that one but haven't built it yet.

[@BrooksMoses]

Looks nice! Thanks for showing all the details of how it works. One amusing thing is that I was looking at tiny geared motors on eBay last week, and the motors they're using are available from at least a dozen sellers, with that distinctive plus-shaped connection on the end. Which is absolutely the way to do it, rather than doing something that has to be custom-manufactured.

[@mussersail]

I know the exact motors you are talking about - low RPM, high torque, gear motors. They are incredibly small and have some power. I used two in an O Scale scratchbuilt locomotive that I will be doing a construction video about. With only two axles, the little critter can pull six weighted O Scale cars up a 5% grade. Better performance than I expected, since the prototype probably couldn’t have done that. (Future video). Currently, I’m playing around with using one in re-powering the Walthers HO Scale Bascule bridge. Again, a future video, although this one might be the next as I’ll make them in real time as I solve problems with this bridge. The motor on these wiseman doors is maybe even smaller, but has some power, and I think probably some sort of helical or concentric gears to slow down the rpms. Thanks for watching.

[@stevewiedmer844]

Hi, I tried to find them on ebay, no luck. How do I find them ? Key words ?

[@mussersail]

@ Type in VIESSMANN 5172 make sure you use 2 ss and 2 nn. A bunch came up when I type that. All are in Germany or Austria, which is where I think I got one of mine from. They are cheaper there, so with shipping they will be same or less as any US supplier, which currently all US suppliers look to be out of stock. They arrive fairly quickly from overseas. There might be a setting on eBay that you have on that wont show you international sellers of products.

[@stevewiedmer844]

@@mussersail Thanks, I am only looking for the motors, not those overpriced Viessmann doors ; )

[@CMDModels1]

They make many interesting products. Their car motion is going from strength to strength with msny new innovations coming

[@toddarmstrong.trackside.action]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with the Viessmann doors. I've been looking at these for a while, to put in my loco service facility, but at that price tag I kind of wanted to see them in operation first. Your video gave me all the info I need and so thank you for sharing... Your modules look amazing BTW...

[@mussersail]

Thank you. Yes, the price tag is a bit high, but if you break it down, most HO non-sound DCC decoders are going to be around $40 anyway, and then you add in the door and motor. Just follow the instructions for assembly and you will be fine. The door has to be in a certain position when you install the motor. The motor and door brackets just snap in, so if you are off a little, you can just pop off and reassemble. I think I had to at least once. We couldn’t use the DCC feature because accessory decoders are frowned upon on Free-mo, for obviously integration issues because of the addresses. DC is very easy, but you will need two momentary push button switches. I believe you just connect the positive to the switches, and then the green and red wires from the door decoder, and a momentary contact with one will raise door, and other will close. You can change direction mid-stream too. Very easy. I just set up on bench and used a temporary power supply to touch the wires, and work out the electronics ahead of time.

[@charlierumsfeld6626]

Thank you. I saw the door in another video. Learn new things all the time.

[@brfriedm]

Nice video thanks. If you connect this via DCC, can u assign it an address and lower and raise the door from your DCC throttle?

[@mussersail]

I didn’t look into the DCC specifics, but I assume you assign it a accessory address, just like a switch machine or signal. And I also assume, just like the accessory addresses, when you type them in, you press 1 for normal, or 2 for reverse (on NCE anyway) and I imagine those would just correspond to open and close. I would have loved to have set up with DCC, but since it was going on a Free-mo module, I couldn’t. Since Free-mo modules are set up with different groups and shows, having an accessory with an assigned address, could get complicated if someone else showed up with one with same address. Just go old fashioned push buttons.

[@ronduz1281]

Nice👍👍👍

[@mussersail]

Thanks

[@DarkpawTheWolf]

These are pretty cool. Do they automatically shut the motors off when they are all the way closed, or do you hold the momentary switch until it's where you want it to stop?

[@mussersail]

I’m not sure how the technology on this works, but for looking sort of cheap, it functions very well. The motor has a cruciform gear thing on its shaft that mates with a another, female cruciform inside the door roll. You slide the motor in, I think when the door is fully extended, and it knows to go up or down from there. I don’t really know if the motor has some sort of internal limit switch, or is just an electronic precision thing. Somehow it’s smart enough to not turn on if door is all the way up, and you press the up button - nothing happens. Same thing when it’s closed. Again, pretty amazing and reliable engineering for cheap plastic parts, and a tiny motor. You don’t hold the switch - just a quick press and it will complete its opening or closing by itself. If the door is going up or down, and you want to change direction - just press the specific up or down button again, and it works. The momentary switches are connected to the positive voltage in. The circuit must be waiting for a digital HIGH signal, which you send by pressing the button. Very slick.

[@jeffmurphree2937]

Hi, This is a very informative post and thank you for sharing it! I model O-scale, however, and after checking its website, Viessmann does not offer these rollup doors in this scale. Since you modified your doors, do you think these could modified large enough for O-scale? Thanks!

[@mussersail]

Thanks for watching. You couldn’t modify these doors for O-Scale, other than possibly for a very small roll up door on a garage or shed, but Im not even sure they would be big enough for an O scale vehicle. The issue is the way the doors and motor are assembled - no room to widen, just enough to add a few HO scale feet vertical, like I did.

[@michaelmassetti2575]

Very intersting, how would one use this to make an ho scale model of the nasa vab roll up doors. Thanks for the video.m.m.

[@mussersail]

@@michaelmassetti2575 I think you would need to make something custom

[@coolruehle]

This is not a rail car door. This is for a building for vehicles to go in and out of.

[@mussersail]

@@coolruehle it could be for either. Three of the Kibri kits it’s designed to fit into directly are for road vehicles but a fourth is for rail equipment. For our purposes it’s a direct match to a railroad freight door into a metal warehouse, located two minutes from our house. The door is in use currently, with the only difference between our HO model is it receives coil cars, not box

[@southernprojectsyt6340]

it's just a roll up door... as long as it's wide enough, there is no set thing a "DOOR" can be used for. In real life or modeling.....

[@coolruehle]

You can't put it on the side of a box car! 😂

[@southernprojectsyt6340]

@@coolruehle BET ME LOL. now you get to put one installed in the side of a box car. It'll be a must see video....😎