universal charging cradle prototype with individual ballance taps

[Varriano]

The charging cradle is a thing of beauty. I think there is some modesty on display however. Reminds me of my brother in law and his comments about building furniture and restoring antiques. "All you need is a decent saw and a router". Yeah and a lot of talent.

Great job.

[Wattnot]

Nice work!

Question for the OP:

I use a Cellpro 4S with an old nicad 4 bay charger that I gutted. The 4S doesn't have a deans connection and ONLY charges the battery through the balance tap. So what I did was wire the bays so the cells are in series from the black to the red wire, then put the white taps on each of the positive terminals. If charging less than 4 I short the red wire to the positive of the last cell. Is this sort of how you are doing it? Mdocod has suggested I just charge them all in parallel and let the charger think it's all one cell . . . but that forces me to make sure the cells charge/discharge state are very close to each other. The problem I'm having is I keep getting code 17 errors. It only seems to work if the cells are at least half full and even then I get codes. I'm thinking it's because the wires might be too long and too small and the extra resistance I added is messing with the computer in the 4S charger.

Thanks!

[Data]

Nice work!

Question for the OP:

I use a Cellpro 4S with an old nicad 4 bay charger that I gutted. The 4S doesn't have a deans connection and ONLY charges the battery through the balance tap. So what I did was wire the bays so the cells are in series from the black to the red wire, then put the white taps on each of the positive terminals. If charging less than 4 I short the red wire to the positive of the last cell. Is this sort of how you are doing it? Mdocod has suggested I just charge them all in parallel and let the charger think it's all one cell . . . but that forces me to make sure the cells charge/discharge state are very close to each other. The problem I'm having is I keep getting code 17 errors. It only seems to work if the cells are at least half full and even then I get codes. I'm thinking it's because the wires might be too long and too small and the extra resistance I added is messing with the computer in the 4S charger.

Thanks!

The Cellpro engineers could tell you what is causing the error. The wires on the balance taps of my charger are a light gage too. My charger starts up with a very light charge current till it reads the battery. Does yours do that and do you get the error right away? If so it is probably not the wire size. Did you recheck the solder connections?

The 10s requires me to change several of the wires each time I change to another number of batteries in serial. That is why I made them all banana plugs so it would be quick and easy.



Cheers
Dave

[Data]

The charging cradle is a thing of beauty. I think there is some modesty on display however. Reminds me of my brother in law and his comments about building furniture and restoring antiques. "All you need is a decent saw and a router". Yeah and a lot of talent.

Great job.

But everybody is a newbie when they start. I think this is the kind of project where if a person wants to try their hand at building and they are willing to post their progress here, with our help they will succeed. It does not need to be CNC machined to work.

Thanks for the complement.


Cheers
Dave

[skylar]

here are some shots of the one im working on. I will post more later.

[Data]

That looks great. Did you decide on what clamps you are going to use yet?

[skylar]

ITs going to be little different, I plan to try and use maybe two clamps. I have wait and see, through some testing. I would say im only half way through.

[skylar]

Also as a side note, The connectors I used are the same size so I can still use banana plugs. I was trying to reduce my cost but its lot more labor.

[skylar]

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...eat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...eat=directlink

some updated photos. sorry not the best pictures in low light areas.

[Data]

Very nice design.

[skylar]

thanks not the best of looking but it works and I dont really need clamps since the brass i used is pretty heavy, and the springs do not push back up. I can't complain for my first build though. IT was fun for me. Just thought I could try something little different. with some different parts.

[jdriller]

Here is my version of Data's universal battery holder. I purchased everything from ebay and home depot. The wood was some scrap I had. Dave's model inspired me to build my own because he wouldn't sell me his. It works great and was worth the time and effort. Thanks Dave!!

[donn_]

Cool! I especially like the ice auger attachments.

[jdriller]

Thanks Donn! I moved them to the exotic coating thread. ooops

[Data]

jdriller,

That looks sweet!

I know I just saw it at PF13, but I did not notice how you attached the upper contact to the clamp?

Cheers
Dave

[jdriller]

I used a small brass bolt. I drilled and tapped the clamp and threaded the bolt in.
Plastic is easy to tap.

[paetzi]

Hi, i have a question about how you are loading the cells.
Are you using the balancer for loading?
How is it wired from the connector of the balancer to the banana plugs?
I´ve got a single channel charging station but it has a balancer and i want to load 4 lipo 32650 cells at the same time. It´s the following station:

[txg]

here is my solution for charging my 14500s in parallel:



It's the christmas gift of my brother, he built it on his cnc mill.

works great, but you have to be careful not to overtighten the screws.

[Data]

here is my solution for charging my 14500s in parallel:



It's the christmas gift of my brother, he built it on his cnc mill.

works great, but you have to be careful not to overtighten the screws.

I did not see your post till just now. That looks perfect. Nice machining work too.

Cheers
Dave

[skylar]

the power of the cnc. very nice and looks simple and clean too...