Any one built their own lithium battery power packs, I/m running out of room in may tender section of my Mason Bogie and really only have the boiler left and was considering building one to fit in that area, Bill
Check with Don Sweet @ https://www.rcsofne.com/
Remote Control Systems of New England
79 Abbott Rd
Penacook, NH 03303
Phone: (603) 321-1347
E-Mail address: [email protected]
Like John said. Battery space has skinny 14.8 v cylindrical shaped packs that might fit in your boiler.
Doc
Bill Barnwell said:
Any one built their own lithium battery power packs, I/m running out of room in may tender section of my Mason Bogie and really only have the boiler left and was considering building one to fit in that area, Bill
Bill,
I make my own. 18650 cells (typical size) are readily available on Aliexpress.com, often intended for e-cigs, but I have been buying 4 at a time (14.4V) for around $10. While 18650 is most common, there are lots of other sizes, mostly shorter/smaller, and some have tabs for soldering.
The same site has 1,2 or 4 cell battery holders, plus they have protection boards so you don’t over- or under-charge the batteries.
For a specific location like yours, I’d look for the tabbed ones so you can make up an odd-sized pack. The protection board doesn’t have to be near the batteries - just make sure it is between the batteries and the other electrics.
Hobbyking.com may have what you want, you can search by length, width and height (and a bunch of other parameters too like chemistry, mah, cells, etc). I’ve used their page to find batteries that will fit into smaller spaces.
Bill,
Generally user interaction with actual assembling, I.e., soldering Lithium Ion cells is NOT recommended. While cells with “tabs” can be soldered as a rule they are generally spot welded by battery pack assembler/packagers (FWIW cell manufacturers do NOT off battery packs, just loose individual cells).
Can you share the dimensions of the area your confined to? What voltage is desired?
If you don’t have any luck finding what you need let us know, I can help with one off welded battery packs.
Michael
I made this custom split pack for my Shay. 3 cells and the protection board in the boiler and one remote cell in the air tank…
That is some determined engineering, how much voltage is each cell?
Bill Barnwell said:
That is some determined engineering, how much voltage is each cell?
Standard LiIon 18650 cells, 3.7 Volts each. The 4 cell pack is 14.8V fully charged.
Jon, thanks so much for the information I have ordered the rail boss 4 and door charging circuit board, basically because it was on sale and available, I will have to measure the area very carefully because at least 1/3 of the boiler is taken up by the support bracket for the boiler so there isn’t a lot of room left. Certainly would like to put everything into the engine but considering the size of the tender body I might be looking at a trailing car but being as this will be my passenger car engine I have first in line behind the engine a baggage/rpo car so it shouldn’t be a problem, Thanks again so much for the reply, Bill
Jon,
Great idea splitting up the cells to make all fit. That said, that’s a lot of wires bunched up with the single cell?
Michael
Michael Glavin said:
Jon,
Great idea splitting up the cells to make all fit. That said, that’s a lot of wires bunched up with the single cell?
Michael
Thanks. I don’t really recall how that test pack was wired. I think there may have been two extra wires for the balancing port on my charger for the initial pack charge. The final install only had two wires between the single cell and the board.
EDIT To add: In that first pic, the pack B+/B1 wires are also tucked over by the single cell adding to the spaghetti confusion.