A better alternator delete

[Daox]

I went with the 10 gauge. 40A should be fine.

I worked on the project again today. This time I worked on the pack. Doing it earlier would have been easy, but I didn't! So, I had to drill holes and make bus bars for the pack. This was interesting, but thankfully its aluminum and its soft and easy to drill. I held a small wood block under the bus bars while center punching and drilling which made it go alright. I also later marked the positives and negatives with a sharpie for easier identification.

[Daox]

More progress!

I busted open all the plastic shells on the AC power supplies. This took a while and was a pain, but it definitely allows for more flexibility, cooler operation, and lighter weight.





Next up, I desoldered the 2 pin AC plug from each board, and daisy chained them with some new wire. The last one has a new wire to reconnect the AC plug, but it'll be mounted in the new enclosure.






I connected the AC supplies to the DC-DC converters (for charging).





Now, time for some assembly! The side panels went on, and the AC power supplies were put into their mounting slots. Hey, its finally looking like something, yay.





Then, I connected the DC-DC outputs to the battery pack.

This pretty much takes care of the charging side of things besides mounting the AC plug. I haven't figured this out quite yet.

[redneck]

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Just wanted to drop in and say you do nice work.

Neat, clean and well thought out...

Looking forward to the finished product.





>

[Daox]

Thanks redneck! Its nice to hear good feedback. Its taken a lot of time to put it all together. I hope it actually works well haha.

[hayden55]

Hey Daox,

Are you 3d printing these yourself?

[Daox]

Yes I am.

[Daox]

Today I added the AC plug, XT60 plug, and the large relay for the low voltage cutoff. I am really liking how it is looking.

I'm still debating adding some other features. Things I'm thinking about adding are an on/off switch for the dc/dc converter. There is a switch on it already, so I'd just have to wire in a new one and connect the leads. I'm not sure how essential that would be though as you could fairly easily just unplug it too. The other thing I'd like to have is some form of indicator that tells me when the batteries are charged... This is way more complicated as I've essentially created a constant current / constant voltage charger. A voltage indicator wouldn't really suffice as it'll only tell once its reached the constant voltage stage of charging. Ideas are welcome, but I'm thinking that I'll probably just omit these features for now.





You can see the large relay behind the AC plug in this image.

[Daox]

I am now thinking I would like to put an on/off switch on this dealy. I hooked up the low voltage disconnect to a power supply today to play with it and found out that the LED display stays lit all the time. I was hoping it was timed to turn off, or reduce brightness or something. But, it stays on all the time. The current draw isn't massive, but its definitely measurable at .02A. Considering the pack is 20.8Ah, it would drain itself in a bit over a month. It only stops drawing power once the voltage is under 3V. If I ever set it in storage for a while it wouldn't be good as it would totally murder the battery pack.

[Daox]

I dug in my parts bin and came up with a nice power switch for the alt delete. Its a panel mount switch with a nice nut on the back to screw it in.





However, when I threw it in the 3d model, it just looked dumb. It stuck up way too far, blocked the view to the LED display and the buttons.





So, I decided to mount it flush with the top of the case. I think it will look and function much better.





This of course meant that I couldn't just use the switch's included mounting nut sadly. So, I had to design a mounting bracket to hold the switch to the top plate.

I just threw this together to show an example of what goes into designing this thing.

[MetroMPG]

Question: do the converters have LED's to indicate they're working? Would make monitoring / troubleshooting easier if one fails.