Collaborate Disseminate
Modern lithium-ion battery packs for cordless power tools contain an incredible amount of energy, which necessitates that they come with a range of safeties. Although it’s good when the battery …read more Continue reading Reverse-Engineering Makita Batteries To Revive Them
If you’ve ever worked with multi-cell rechargeable battery packs, you know that the individual cells will eventually become imbalanced. To keep the pack working optimally, each cell needs to be …read more Continue reading Fighting Back Against Dodgy Dyson Batteries
For the price of a mid-range Android phone, [Kenneth Finnegan] turned a 50 caliber ammo can into a 50 amp-hour portable power supply. The battery pack uses four 3.5 V LiFePO4 cells wired in series to achieve a nominal 12 V supply that stands in for a traditional lead-acid …read more
Continue reading Ammo Can Battery; 50 Ah LiFePO4 Clad in Army Green
If you ever doubt the potential for catastrophe that mucking about with electric vehicles can present, check out the video below. It shows what can happen to a couple of Tesla battery modules when due regard to safety precautions isn’t paid.
The video comes to us by way of [Rich], a gearhead with a thing for Teslas. He clearly knows his way around the EV world, having rebuilt a flood-soaked Tesla, and aspires to open an EV repair shop. The disaster stems from a novelty vehicle he and friend [Lee] bought as a side project. The car was apparently once …read more
Continue reading Fail of the Week: How Not to Electric Vehicle
At Hackaday we’re all about DIY. However, projects can have many components, and so there’s sometimes a choice between making something or buying it. In this case, [GreatScott!] wondered if it would be cheaper to make or buy a lithium-ion battery pack for his new eBike kit. To find out, he decided to make one.
After some calculations, he found he’d need thirteen 18650 cells in series but decided to double the capacity by connecting another thirteen in parallel. That gave him a 5 Ah capacity battery pack with a nominal voltage of 48.1 V and one capable of supplying …read more
Continue reading Comparing Making To Buying A Lithium Ion Battery Pack
Who can resist the insane deals on bizarre hardware that pop up on auction websites? Not [Dane Kouttron], for sure. He stumbled on Armor X7 ruggedized tablets, and had to buy a few. They’d be just perfect for datalogging in remote and/or hostile locations, if only they had better batteries and were outfitted with a GSM data modem… So [Dane] hauled out his screwdrivers and took stuff apart. What follows is a very detailed writeup of the battery management system (BMS), and a complete teardown of this interesting tablet almost as an afterthought.
First, [Dane] tried to just put a …read more
