EM3 ev / Cellman Triangle Battery Bag

dogman dan

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May 17, 2008
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Location
Las Cruces New Mexico USA
Paul recently sent me a free charger to review, and mentioned that he was throwing a triangle battery bag in the box as well. Fine, I thought, I hate battery bags, and much prefer solid metal boxes to carry my batteries. We'll see,,,, I thought.

He mentioned something about a minor defect on the bag, so when it arrived, I started hunting for it. I was stumped!! I just could not spot a dang thing wrong with it. Till I put it on the bike and it was quite obvious. :D Bag zipped up closed.jpg

Superficially it resembles the familiar Falcon EV bag. It's about the same size, and has lots of generous and sturdy Velcro straps to attach it. But right away, I noticed a few nice things about this bag. First, it has two nicely made elastic grommets for exiting the wires. One up front, one on the back. The way they are made, it should minimize water getting inside the bag. Second, and more important, the sides, ends, top and bottom of the bag are generously padded. This gives the bag a bit more chance for abrasion resistance in the inevitable crash or just the bike falling over. Nice touch Paul! A great deal of my dislike of battery bags was the lack of protection provided by a single layer of fabric.

Like the other bags, it has two zippers pulls, which allows the possibility of adding a lock. At least the curious monkeys will be slowed down. You could also just put a zip tie through the pulls to secure the bag closed from the curious.Battery bag.jpg

Turns out I really like this bag!! It's far nicer than my metal box was. Though sturdy, the box always rattled, and got worse over time. Because my lipo packs are protected by inner boxes, I think the bag, with it's additional padding will be quite safe. In winter, the insulation in the bag will help keep my battery toasty warm as I ride.

There is always a nit pick somewhere though, since I live in hell, a lighter color than black would have been nice. But that's pretty easy to fix, white duct tape for example, or build a sun shade over the bag if I really must ride in 110F weather. I think I'll just make that run to the grocery in the morning and I'll be fine till fall.

Installed on the bike in the pic above, I had a small problem with the fit. My frankenbike's front triangle was made from an overlong frame, that used to be a Currie USPD bike. So the triangle is a tad long for the bag. Thanks to the generously long Velcro strips, I was able to come up with a quick and easy solution for shifting the fit of the battery as far forward as possible. A handy fun noodle takes up the space, and still remains very securely attached thanks to the long Velcro. Most mtb frames, the fit should be perfect. But if not, it definitely will have plenty of Velcro for making any adjustments, even if you have a fat tube frame.

Now on to the real reason I thought this bag just wasn't for me. It's designed specifically for carrying EM3 ev's batteries, constructed from round cells. It's just about 3" wide, from seam to seam. The lipo battery I'm currently using is made from cells about 2" wide. So either way I stack em, it's one inch too big or one inch too small. Plus, my batteries are square, while the bag is a triangle. Getting out my battery, and trying it for fit, I quickly found that my problem was no problem. My battery is roughly 4 inches x 5 inches, square, and packed into a protective plastic box. Turns out, that by putting a small piece of fun noodle foam in the bottom corner, It fits just about perfect. My second pack, about 4" x 3" still fits in the front section just fine. It fits snug, but the entire 48v 15 ah lipo pack fits in the bag, with plenty of room for pedaling without rubbing my legs on the bag all day.

How about that, the thing seems like it was made just for carrying 15 ah of 14s lipo. Looks to me like 20 ah of 12s lipo would also fit fine. Same orientation, one pack standing up, and the front pack lying on the side. With room for a small headlight battery pack as well, or a spare tube.

Here's the square battery.
Square battery, triangle bag.jpg
And the easy solution. Just about enough space for a spare tube instead of a foam spacer in the corner.View attachment 2
Then the 48v 10 ah pack stands up in the back corner of the bag. This pic also shows the wire exiting the bag through the elastic grommet. View attachment 1
Then the second 5 ah pack, with another foam filler under it's lower corner. Bingo, perfect fit of 48v 15 ah lipo.48v 15 ah in the bag.jpg
 
Yeah looks like a great bag, been eyeballing it on his site for a while now.
Originally I was thinking frame bags like that aren't the answer to easy removal of my battery due to how many straps they have on the frame, but it has recently occurred to me that I can just tape battery bricks together in the shape of the frame and just unzip the frame bag and take the batterys out in one go, duh.
 
I love mine, fits my medium framed hard tail very well.

..
 

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nukezero said:
Just ordered this with my kit from cellman. Got the 18ah Samsung NCM battery pack with it.
Has it arrived yet? And if so, How long was shipping? and Is there room for a controller as well as the battery?
 
The controller fits in there nicely - and the charger cable pokes out the grommet. And Dogman's note about protection against the rain was sucessfully tested today in a downpour.

-Mack
 
This looks like exactly what I need. I'm imagining having about 20ah at 48v so it should fit nicely.
 
More than 15 ah might be a bit tight. Depends on what chemistry, and shape of the cells. I would think that 44v, 12s 20 ah of lipo should be able to fit, with a staggered arrangement like in the above pic. In that pic, the cells are slightly smaller, but 5 ah should also work.

Mine is 14s, and I wanted square packages so they fit on any of my bikes, and typically are removed to charge. So I have more wasted space in the bag.

I'm liking the bag a LOT more than the metal toolboxes I have preferred for many years. The toolbox works great on rear rack carry, but not so great for the triangle mount.
 
The cells I have are pretty small. 2S10P is like 4 1/2" x 2" x 3" roughly. Or it will be once I add some coroplast. I'll have to do some calculation then to see if I can arrange this. I can always change the configuration as that only needs a soldering iron.
 
I do welcome suggestions for what could be done to improve the bags, so if there is anything specific, I'm all ears. There's no way I can make a bag that will fit all frames well, but I did feel a longer sleeker bags would fit the typical MTB frame a little better, than a taller bag. I know the sort of angles we end up with a triangle pack, so I based the outline around those angles, removing unnecessary excess where it wasn't needed. It's gonna be a bit small on a big frame, but you can't make 1 size that fits all and as Dogman demonstrated, you can build something up around the bag, to make it better fit the frame. At the end of the day, my primary focus was on making a bag to house our own battery packs, built with 65mm long cylindrical cells. So I kept the width around 80mm and I let the outline follow the angles we see on the triangle packs, that dictated the basic outline and the basic outline also happened to match a typical frame, so all good IMO. If you go much wider on the bag it's get's in the way of the crank, so an overly wide bag is not ideal IMO, if it also extends down the cranks. Saying that I have an old beater of a bike and an old A123 pack built with the first A123 26650 cells that I bought in China from some random place. The pack is kind of wide and truly Ghetto, about 120mm plus at it's widest (don't ask) but it squeezes in ok and that pack is still plugging away, the new bag houses it just fine.

So far I've had very little feedback on the bags, even though we've sold quite a few. They say, no news is good news, so they must be holding up pretty well. I've seen triangle bags that would tear along the top, but fingers crossed, we haven't had that complaint. It was specified that the bags needed to be strong and well padded, They ended up not dissimilar to a descent camera bag internally, with fleece lining in places which you can attach velcro straps to if you wish, well padded on every side. Several internal straps and some nice access points.

The main thing I never considered when we were planning these bags was quite how bulky they are for shipping. They're a PITA when shipped using a method that measures volume. With all the padding they end up pretty bulky, no matter how tight you pack them. They aren't light either, it's not heavy, but its still about 1lb for a bag, just under 0.5kg.

Anyway, that's enough about the bag. Happy to hear they are going down pretty well, hope we can improve and offer more choice in the future.

Thanks
Paul
 
I'm happy with my bag.

I noticed that when the bag is centered on my frame, the rear exit point for battery leads opens up to the left and is slightly left of center.
On the 50.4V cell_man LiNCM battery, the exit point for the power leads is slightly right of center.

When the triangle battery is placed in with the leads exiting the slot on the back of the bag, the battery leads get folded across the seat tube and go from slightly right of center to slight left of center and the weight of the battery presses them against the seat tube. This also causes the wires to exit the pack at a sharp angle, and every bump in the road causes some levering stress where the leads enter the battery.

On my battery I placed some sign material and dense foam on the back near where the wires exit so that this bend isn't too sharp and keeps the stress on the BMS board connection low. I remove my battery from the bag every day for at-work charging, and where the wire comes into contact with the hard seat tube (through the bag), I place a rolled up wad of bubble wrap to reduce pounding from road shocks. So far so good.
 
Supertux1 said:
I'm happy with my bag.

I noticed that when the bag is centered on my frame, the rear exit point for battery leads opens up to the left and is slightly left of center.
On the 50.4V cell_man LiNCM battery, the exit point for the power leads is slightly right of center.

When the triangle battery is placed in with the leads exiting the slot on the back of the bag, the battery leads get folded across the seat tube and go from slightly right of center to slight left of center and the weight of the battery presses them against the seat tube. This also causes the wires to exit the pack at a sharp angle, and every bump in the road causes some levering stress where the leads enter the battery.

On my battery I placed some sign material and dense foam on the back near where the wires exit so that this bend isn't too sharp and keeps the stress on the BMS board connection low. I remove my battery from the bag every day for at-work charging, and where the wire comes into contact with the hard seat tube (through the bag), I place a rolled up wad of bubble wrap to reduce pounding from road shocks. So far so good.

A shorter cable on the battery might be a better solution if you are pulling the battery out of the bag every day. That way the connection is inside the bag, then you could run a cable out through the exit more permanently. I think that would be a sensible approach, rather than make the bag too specific to a certain pack arrangement. With the battery cable shortened, and an extension cable added between the controller, 4mm bullets linking to the controller on 1 end and the standard 3 Anderson pre-charge arrangement on the other end. That could work well and it would be fairly easy to cater to specific cable length requirements. Only downside I can see is that Anderson are more likely to overheat inside the bag than in free air.

The zip does make it difficult to have the bag properly centred, it is why we put the zip on the left side, away from the crank, so at least if it is a little off-centre, it is not fouling the crank.
 
I might actually move the connection to inside the bag, but things in there are pretty tight already. It's not too difficult to hold the battery in one hand and thread the leads through the hole and past the little elastic flap. I put about a 4mm protective shell around the battery with that plastic sign board (about as thick as a cardboard box) and it's very snug and doesn't bounce around with the bubble wrap block taking up the rest of the space and the velcro straps.

I slip a bit of old rubber tube around where the battery leads connect to the controller and then velcro all of that to one of the rack supports near the seat.
I used to leave it hang but had an incident where I hit a bump and the power cut out because the shorter red anderson connector on your precharge assembly became slightly dislodged. It works great now and protects the connections from water and curious eyes. :)
 
I'm liking my EM3 triangle bag as well! I've got 20s2p (10Ah) fit in there quite nicely.
IisZUQw.jpg
 
30s10Ah.jpg


^--falconev bag, but the dimensions might be similar enough

Cmon guys, you can get more lipo in there :twisted:
 
Bumping this to remind readers we have an order happening now.

To coincide with a group order I thought this would be a good time to repost the reviews of this product along with other reviews.
It was and still is the best deal fora bag it's size. The Falcon it was compared to was $65 plus shipping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NJTktQ1_q0

http://ezgo-now.com/my-picks-page/the-leed-frame-bag-for-e-bikes-others/

"The EM3 ev Triangle Frame Bag is new to the market as of last year and sells for $35.00 plus shipping. Had I wanted a full size frame bag this is no doubt the one I would have chosen. It is by far the best dollar value. It measures 17″ long x 10.2″ tall x 3.1″ wide and is triangle shaped. All though it is similar in size and shape to the Falcon EV bag, it is in the opinion of the manufacturer, a superior product. See EM3 Endless Sphere thread for explanation.The EM3 ev Company responsible for this bag was started by a long time Endless Sphere member and E-bike enthusiast that goes by the name of Cell_man (Paul). He has an excellent reputation among members of the forum and the E-bike community in general. He added this bag to his inventory about a year ago. Prior to that he sold the Falcon EV bag. His description of the IEM3 triangle bag is as follows: Internally the bag is generously padded where it sits on the bicylcle tubes. 3 internal velcro straps are fitted. A fleece lining allows an additional velcro strap (1m included with every bag) to be used to additionally secure items inside. 2 cable access points are fitted at the front and at the top rear of the bag. Side panels are also padded. A long zip makes it easy to fit a battery which fills the bag completely. A total of 8 extra long velcro straps secure the bag to the frame. For a detailed review of this bag read EM3 ev / Cellman Triangle Battery Bag."
 
Bag orders are wrapping up...get in now next order will likely not have the discount unless there is a large enough order. This takes a lot of work and is done without profit. Road rash and I do it for our own parts and to get in o the same deals.

WOW what a bag!
 

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HI
I will build a battery from individual 18650 cells. I have read 3 threads on es on bag and i see that most people use out of factory square batteries.
did nt see lots of people talking about 18650 diy batteris:( .
falcon or em3 or lunacycle or else
the cells will be parallel to the ground and perpendicular to the bike's frame . if it the bags are large enough...!??!

SO

Wich bag is a better choice for diy 18650 batteries?
WHich one is bigger ?

it seems em3 and side padding but falcon no is this exact?
if someonw have the exact dimmensions i woud appreciate.
 
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