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Converting Dewalt Cordless Tools to Lithium Ion 18650

Well, first 18650 laptop batteries are Lithium Cobolt Ion. Other 18650s, especially high current (10+amps) and Tesla 18650s are other chemistries. But I never seem to get my hands on those, only spare laptop batteries.

Normally, I try to build ebike battery packs with my 18650s.  I need 100+ and I make a 13s10p pack (for those not in the know, when you see 13S10P or 5s2p it means series/parallel, ie. 13s10p is 13 in series (13×4.2 = 54.6volts) and 10 parallel (each cell is degraded to about 2000mah or 2ah so 10×2=20 amp hours aka 20ah).

Anyway, I test incoming 18650s by charging them up to 4.15 volts (not 4.2 because some 18650s aren’t designed to go that high) and then wait 2 weeks and measure the batteries. I then rank them by how much voltage they’ve self-discharged

4.13 – 4.15  Excellent

4.11-4.12  Good

4.06- 4.10 Poor. Only for non-bike projects

<4.05 throw out, these obviously have internal damage and can be dangerous

These Poor quality is still good enough for non-critical projects like building packs for inverters or retooling NiCad tools to 18650s.

Converting Cordless with external pack

So I had 2 cheap drills who’s packs were dying and I converted them over to 18650s because I had some spares from a pack built (see Homemade Pack thread)

And I posted a thread about a dangerous voltage inversion on one of the 18650s that I pushed too hard, at which point it devolved into a tool conversion thread. Thus, here is a thread for DIY tool conversions.

For my 18v cheap drill, I opened the battery case, ripped out the guts, kept the connector and shoved 4s2p into the case and wired it up. No balance lead, I just want to see how it performs over time.

For the 12v drill, I did the same thing but only put in a 3s2p pack.  You need to understand that typical laptop cells can only push 1C discharge continous and peak 2C .  The average laptop cell these days is 2.4ah therefore 1C is 2.4 amps. However, they have degraded usually to 2ah so therefore 1C is 2amps and 2C is 4amps. If I have a 3s2p, that means I have 2 parallel for 4ah and capable of 4amps continuous and 8 peak. That is good enough for a cheap drill, but not a high quality drill.  If you want to convert a high amp draw drill you may need to go to hobby king and buy a 10C 3-4ah pack. They will fit in the old drill battery pack (you must check reference sheet for dimensions!).  In my case I had an idea for an external pack.

My 18v XRP Dewalt drill I’m more protective of. I have 3 batteries, 1 good, 1 bad, 1 dying at 15v. The bad one I ran with an idea someone mentioned of an external pack.

I opened the bad pack, ripped out all the cells but the one in the stem. The stem has a cell that fits perfect. It holds the connector fine, so I fixed it in place and soldered a bypass around it to the connector. Then ran these 18ga wire to an external pack and put them in a leather hip pouch that is thick enough to protect it in the field. I found the 18ga wire gets hot while using a sawsall. I’ll fix that with 14 or 10ga wire from my stocks.

The pack itself was 5s6p at about 12ah, with a balancing lead coming off it.  I just used packing tape to tape that out of the way while in the pack.

It should be able to supply 24amps at peak pull.  For charging, I’m just using the alligator clips on my icharger to clip to + and – and charge off of it. In the future as I convert the rest, I’ll convert the stock Dewalt charger with a modded meanwell or other powersupply.

So here it is.

Pouch is leather and can take some abuse
Pouch is leather and can take some abuse

5s6p pack of 18650s

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hackerspace

Pioneer SA-1480 diagram

I have an old Pioneer SA1480 that does 130W per channel. Only does 2 channels.  Built 1987-88 era. Very little info on it out there. Has a built in 7 band equalizer.

I’m thinking of bridging the channels to drive a 15″ subwoofer  for my home system. 280W may do it. But I’d rather get 1000W, if possible.

If you need the schematics there are here.

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hackerspace

Cable Dolly Cam proof of concept done

Using the parts of a cassette player, a 9v battery and some scrap metal pieces I think I can build a working cable dolly for a lightweight vid camera.

Here Lewis is with me demoing this thing.

The motor is listed as 9V, awfully convenient to invite a 9V battery to drive it.

Next step is to make the runner longer to stabilize yaw. Then some gyros to stabilize pitch.

[powerpress url=”https://mccartneytaylor.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/MVI_10481.m4v”]

Battery pack case attached. Triangular frame added. Simple L bracket with a 1/4″ 20 thread as a tripod head created.

[powerpress url=”https://mccartneytaylor.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/first-cablecam-run.m4v”]

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hackerspace

Hacking a Lenoxx CD101 stereo to take iPod-Rockbox

So the Lexoxx boombox isn’t a very good boom box. This one was built in 1999. But it could be useful as portable speaker amp with mods. The history on this boombox is simple – it was left behind in one of my rental units. So it is now mine.  I think I kept it just because I might need the transformer inside. I fix stuff and keep xfmrs around.

The boombox doesn’t have any auxiliary inputs, so you either get the CD (dead), the tape deck (dead with a broken pulley), or the radio (works).  My idea was to tap into where the CD output feeds into the amp, run a wire to the outside of the boombox,  and rig an external jack into it.  So then I could input either a MP3 player or my receiver of my wireless mic system.

The wireless mic is the PRO 88W/T from Audio Technica.  FM based, but good to 40 meters.  So my idea was to use the Boombox as a portable speaker amp for convention talks that I give while wearing the mic. Sometimes people in the back can’t hear me. All I’d have to do is hook on my mic and put the boombox and mic receiver plugged into a hacked input jack.

The boombox had some drawbacks:

  • Scratchy pot on the volume
  • Weird battery wiring for 8 “C” cell batteries that I couldn’t replace with a small 12V motorcycle battery
  • Low quality speakers with some distortion. Possibly blown
  • Missing battery backplate

So not a great stereo or boombox. But if it burns into a puddle of plastic ooze, not much of a loss.

 

Once I had the box open, I tried to find the cassette out going into the amp but gave up on that. The CD looked easier.     There was a silver sheathed cable running from the CD player to the power amp on the left in the picture.  It had a cable connector on the CD side.

I unplugged it, snipped off the cable end and found a red, white and uninsulated steel wire. The steel wire is ground, the white is left speaker.

So i put the cut CD input wire up thru the case, found a spare stereo plug and soldered it on. PRESTO! MP3 input, or a mic input.

Update 22DEC12 – Couldn’t stand the speaker distortion, replaced both speakers with some spare 3ohm car speakers. Also hit the CD/radio/off switch with a tad of WD40 to help the contactors. WD40 will often worsen the contacts over time, but it improved it for now. I don’t have contactor cleaner, so I had little choice.