Motorino XPn 2011

[motorino magnet]

Motorino power !

group buy ?

[Gordo]

No worries here and no need to apologize Doug. And I feel your frustration about shipping cost to Canada and those darn custom fees

Ray

My 40Ah TS cells are $53 each landed. It takes me 3 months to get them as a friend puts them in with his big TS order. $1.35 per Ah no matter what size.

[motorino magnet]

TS -40 or 60 ah seem like the best idea for motorinos-lots of room and not portable.

tel us more !

[motorino magnet]

Like pictures and Canadian landing fees?

[mistercrash]

Hey I'm thinking lipo again, just for the fun of it. So what if I got 10 of these, maybe 11 just in case I get bad cells. I have no idea if these lipos are good, but I figure maybe they're good enough.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__15508__B_Grade_5800mAh_6s_30c_Lipoly_Battery.html

Then I take them all apart, test the cells and weed out the bad ones with the goal being to have 60 good cells. And put them together like this



Then get this Prototype PCB

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1pcs-CIRCUIT-PANEL-PCB-DIY-Prototype-Board-180x300mm-C6-/120731614389?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c1c2a3cb5#ht_2823wt_954

Cut it to size which I figure would end up being 175 mm X 155 mm and cut 120 slots in it with bits like these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10x-0-6mm-NEW-Carbide-PCB-Dremel-Jewelry-CNC-Drill-Bits-/130631811503?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e6a4341af

And end up with a board like this



Then make pieces like this out of C101 oxygen free copper sheets, I'm thinking something like 0.6 mm thick from Onlinemetals.com.



Then assemble in three 5S4P in series for a 15S4P 55.5 V 23.2 ah. Actually 63V when freshly charged. Let the tabs poke through the PCB and copper pieces and bend and solder them in place.



And finally put the wiring on and build a box for it or get some monster heat shrink and shrink it or make like an ebay duct tape pack.



And I would only need one extra charger to balance charge it.



Total cost of this pack would be something like $650 to $700 depending on what I use to finish it off as a boxed pack or shrink pack or duct tape pack. Not including the extra charger.

Or for a little more money, these single cells would make the job even easier.
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__18594__Turnigy_5800mAh_1S_25C_Lipoly_Single_Cell_.html

[Gordo]

TS -40 or 60 ah seem like the best idea for motorinos-lots of room and not portable.

tel us more !

What's to tell? I have 20 TS-40's in my scooter and 3 spares. 60's will be overkill in my estimation unless you are trying to go 100 miles per day. You have to remember that 20Ah Lipo is equivalent to 40Ah Lead.
Authorized Canadian Distributor is 30 minutes from me.
http://www.canev.com/KitsComp/Component ... eries.html
See if you can find a company with more experience and track record?
He doesn't stock 40's or 60's but will order them.

I don't quite understand the request for pictures? Pictures of what?
Canadian landing fees? I thought I made that clear. $53 each LANDED...LANDED, meaning total price before HST, SHIPPING.

[Lessss]

photobucket and image shack are blocked by most business firewalls Try imgur or some other hosting site.

[mistercrash]

I thought some would like to see what they did to me. I was pretty much set on a plug and play option for a Lithium battery but here is what I ended up doing. Thanks to everyone in here, I learned a few things, enough in fact to decide to build my own battery pack out of Konion cells. My plan is to build a 14S16P battery if I have enough good cells in 300 I bought. I'm waiting for them to come any day now. In the mean time, some other stuff came in like two HP server power supplies and a Hyperion 1420i 14S charger. So I went to work making a 12V/24V power supply.





The small hole is for an ON/OFF switch. I installed it and it worked fine but then I decided to go with the two power cords that merge into one. So the switch didn't work after that.

[mistercrash]

I received the Makita packs from Doctorbass this morning. Very fast and nicely packaged in a sturdy double layer cardboard box. Thumbs up to you sir, you French Quebecer sure know how to treat a French Quebecer.
Now I had an idea that this was to be somewhat of a long process, from what I read on making batteries out of those used Makita packs, you have to commit to it and spend a good amount of time preparing those cells. Well I took care of the first pack and it took 20+ minutes I'm gonna be on this for a while I'll report back just before spring with a finished 14S16P battery pack.... I hope.

[mistercrash]

It took a lot less time then I thought to go through the 30 packs I had and get the cells out. I know of one person who is gonna cringe when he sees the pics but that's the way I decided to do it. The final count is 192 cells that are 3.0V and up, 55 cells that are 2.5V - 2.9V, 20 cells that are 2.3V - 2.4V and 33 completely dead. So not bad at all, this turns out to be exactly like Doctorbass said, every pack has 10 cells, usually, two are dead and 8 are still good. Well sometimes it's even more than 8 so I'm very happy up to now. Those 20 cells that are 2.3 and 2.4V will find their way into a couple of cordless drill batteries that I have that use very worn out NiCads.
A pic of some of the cells, there's a few more in another box



What I did to equalize the cells with each other. I made rolls of cells with packing tape.



Then I used DB's trick with the aluminum foil. A book, a towel, the foil, the cells, another foil, another towel and another book.



Finally down in the basement floor with a can of paint on top.

[motorino magnet]

Wow -your a smart fella.

love how you just rolled them up like a big fat joint.

you should sell your wisdom to other motorino owners cause you do know what your doing

[mistercrash]

you should sell your wisdom to other motorino owners cause you do know what your doing

Thanks but the aluminum foil to equalize all the cells is Doctorbass' idea not mine but if you're impressed with the rest then send me some money and I'll tell you everything I know

I made bus bars out of copper. The copper came from 1/2" plumbing pipes. Just a scrap 4' length was all that was needed to make enough bus bars for the battery pack I want to make. So this alternative was the cheapest I thought of to get good copper for bus bars. A 12' length at Home Depot is like under $15 so I used a length of 4'. I hammered the whole pipe flat, as flat as I could get it. Then I grinded the edges on the belt sander until the two layers separated. This gave me two strips that were about 7/8" wide. I used snips to cut along the length of each strips three times to make a total of 8 strips that were very close to 3/16" wide and they are like 1/16" thick.

Now this cheap alternative has its drawbacks. It's a lot of work to end up with bus bars that are as straight as possible. When you cut with the snips, the copper curls around in every directions and your left with a bunch of copper pig tails that need to be strengthened. Even with my best efforts, the bars are not perfectly straight so if you're a perfectionist, this option is not for you. If you can afford to buy nice flat strips of copper already in the dimensions you need, you'll save yourself a lot of work and time. I gotta go through this kinda stuff 'cause I don't make 6 figures a year so I'm poor.

Some stuff that came in for the battery pack, a couple 7S balance connectors, 24 and 10 gauge wire and lots of different dimensions of heat shrink. Only one spool showing in the pic.



First string of 16 cells in parallel being charged up to 4.1V. 13 more to go.

[mistercrash]

14 strings of 16P done. I had a different size copper pipe that I used to make 8 bus bars I was missing but the copper was a bit thinner so I made the bus bars a little wider to compensate. It doesn't look too bad but it doesn't look too good either I don't really care, it will all be well hidden anyway once inside the scooter.



Now I have some quality time to spend with the new charger charging up all these to 4.1V before I join them in series. I wish I had some really big heat shrink to wrap this battery up but I don't and the size I need is expensive so this will probably end up like a duct tape pack.

Edit: I found some blue PVC shrink tube of 300 mm on ebay, I ordered 6 feet of it for under $25 shipped. Cool.

[Gordo]

Edit: I found some blue PVC shrink tube of 300 mm on ebay, I ordered 6 feet of it for under $25 shipped. Cool.

There is a white shrinkwrap that comes in huge sheets. Most marinas wrap 20-100 boat in it each fall. Cheap like borsch. Glue the wrap together, heat it and your done.

[mistercrash]

Thanks for the suggestion. I looked at a couple places that sell boat wraps. They sell them as kits from what I've seen for different sized boats. It is not cheap but even the smallest kit gives enough wrap to make 150 batteries or even more so that's when you can say it becomes cheap to use. Or if you can get some left over pieces for cheap (even for free) from a marina near you. I don't have a marina near me. If I did, I would definitely go there and ask for some left over wrap.

I prepared the 7S balance connectors, they are both 36" long. I am not sure how long they will end up being but I doubt they will be much shorter then they are now.



And the first half of the battery assembled in series.

[motorino magnet]

seems after all your trouble...


easier to buy from ping...


hours and time=

[mistercrash]

A 48V 20Ah Ping with upgraded 5 amp charger and upgraded BMS is almost $900 delivered to me not counting what it would cost in taxes and customs once it passes the Canadian border. For just under $700 total, what I will end up with is a Lithium Ion battery of 50.4V nominal and 24Ah with a C rating much better than a Ping that self equalizes so no need for a BMS. I am putting balance connectors to balance charge once a week just as a precaution. That price also includes the 24V 1200 watts power supply I was able to build and the Hyperion 14S charger I will use to charge this battery at up to 20 amp. I think it is well worth my time and effort plus it gives me some experience in building stuff for myself and the end result will be superior to a Ping IMHO.

I am not being negative against Ping, not at all. I think Ping has good products and does offer very good customer service. From all I have read on the subject.

[rojitor]

Ping has been my cheapest easiest best choice so far. Not the lightest or best c rate of course yet i luv it.

[motorino magnet]

A 48V 20Ah Ping with upgraded 5 amp charger and upgraded BMS is almost $900 delivered to me not counting what it would cost in taxes and customs once it passes the Canadian border. For just under $700 total, what I will end up with is a Lithium Ion battery of 50.4V nominal and 24Ah with a C rating much better than a Ping that self equalizes so no need for a BMS. I am putting balance connectors to balance charge once a week just as a precaution. That price also includes the 24V 1200 watts power supply I was able to build and the Hyperion 14S charger I will use to charge this battery at up to 20 amp. I think it is well worth my time and effort plus it gives me some experience in building stuff for myself and the end result will be superior to a Ping IMHO.

thing is if ya can know an build yourself....and do warranty work ,,,you win so your smart...


when ya open up a retail outlet...for the rest o us fools....

[mistercrash]

I finished putting the 16P strings together to form a 14S16P battery pack with two 7S balance connectors. Right now, the whole pack needs to be wrapped with something sturdy. I will use thin cutting boards that are 1/8" thick and are sold at the dollar store. I will wrap the pack with pieces of those cutting boards and put the heat shrink on top of that. Once the pack is nicely placed in the scooter with dense foam so it doesn't move, it will be well protected. But that will have to wait, I have this company that want to do a study on how I use my scooter and they want me to run with the SLAs for their study. This will last a month and they're suppose to pay me at the end. They don't pay much but it will almost pay for this new battery. So the install of the Lithium Ion pack will have to wait.

Here it is getting balance charged.



Thanks for watching.

[ohzee]

Nice looking pack man - doing that yourself has to feel pretty good.. Look forward to hearing about how it works on your ride.

[mistercrash]

Thanks, it will look much better when I have the heat shrink tubing to put around it. Yes it does feel good to build something like this. After the balance charge was done, the total voltage of the pack was 57.416V. Good stuff. Another thing I like about this pack, other than it is 1/4 of the size of the SLAs I am presently using is that it only weighs 24 pounds shown on the bathroom scale. But now since I am not going to use this pack for about a month, I wonder if I should bring the voltage down to about 60% like lipos.

[mistercrash]

The deal fell through with that company who wanted to do a study on my scooter for a month. It seems their tech guy doesn't want to go through the trouble of installing their data logger on a Motorino scooter. Well fine, they can keep their $500. I went ahead and installed my new Lithium Ion battery today. I forgot to take pics but that battery sure looked small in that big spot I had for the SLAs. Here's a pic of the SLAs I took out. They weigh like 95 pounds total on the bathroom scale.



That new Konion battery weighs only 24 pounds using the same bathroom scale. And what a difference this made on the scooter. Once I was all done putting the thing back together, I went out for a long ride. The scooter feels really light, it handles so much better, turns better, transitions better, brakes better. Not much gain on top speed, maybe 2 km/h but the difference is in the torque. It just accelerates much faster than before, and takes much less time to get to top speed. Going up steep hills is much better than before, I stopped in the middle of the steepest one and twisted the throttle, it just went up the hill accelerating like it was nothing. I shoulda done this at the very start, I can't believe I ran the SLAs for almost a year. This scooter is so much more enjoyable now, it was a lot of work but sooo much worth it.

[granolaboy]

Nice work dude. That's a great looking pack.

You're making me jealous...I'm hauling a ton of lead weight in my XpH....I wish I had the $$$ for some Lith...

[mistercrash]

Is this a good way of calculating the approximate range I have with this new battery I made? Today I had a ride of 25 kms. I recharged the battery and it took back 13 726 mah. Can I just go 25 km divided by 13726 mah equals 0.0018213 times 24 000 mah (total capacity of battery) and end up with 43.71 kms being an approximate total range? Can I safely assume that depending on how many hills I tackle and if I have the wind at my front, I can safely go 17 or 18 km one way before I have to think of coming back? 43.7 kms is a bit disappointing to me. I'm hoping that I'm way off on the way I calculated this. I could do 45 kms with 34 Ah of SLAs in the summer. With 24 Ah of Lithium I was hoping for 60 kms of range.