EBC-X 8-Channels 18650 Battery Capacity Tester Charge & Discharge 10A Aging Test Modificatio

[sam_sam_sam]

This is another battery testing machine that needs to be modified for the cooling fans because these are noisy but not as bad as one of the other battery testing machines that I had modified recently because of it being too noisy

The battery testing machine is going to get two temperatures controlled cooling fans like one I put in the other battery testing machine I just have to remove the temperature sensor and relocate the temperature sensor to one of the heat sinks and put one on the other heat sink so the fan speed can be controlled by temperature

https://www.ebay.com/itm/18609804985....c101465.m3507

This battery testing machine has two 6 volt 60 amp switching power supply in this device and a 12 volt switching power supply plus it looks like it has a module for each channel to communicate with the computer but I did not notice a main ic chip that handle the single individual channel for each battery cell so I am misfiled about how this battery testing machine handles the data coming from each channel

When I recap the 6 volt @ 60 amp switching power supplies I will take some pictures of the circuit boards so you can get an idea how this device works

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I figured out how it communicates with the computer there is actually 9 circuit cards and one of them is different from the other 8 of them so that is what I did see yesterday when I looked at it because I only quickly looked at the main circuit board and it circuit cards boards and did not notice that one of them has a different ic chips on it but the size of circuit boards are very similar in size so that what threw me off a little bit

[sam_sam_sam]

Well things did not go well when I tried to recap the 12 volt 3 amp switching power supply these circuit boards are shit-e the traces come very easily on the top side of a double sided board tried to repair it and when I attempted to power it on it went puff of smoke and that was ended of that of course I bought a replacement one which is slightly different in size so I have to drill more mounting holes this board was not much better but this time I flooded the two component pins with solder and let the capacitor fall out then cleaned out the component trace joints out and put the new one in and this time everything went well and ran all night long

Hopefully I get the switching power supplies back in and can get it back up and running again

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I got the 12 volt switching power supply modified like the original one it has a safety cap on the negative voltage side of filtering capacitor to the ground wire which the replacement one does not have so I removed it from the original one and mounted on the bottom of the new switching power supply I was having a very hard time finding a replacement for this switching power supply because of its layout and wattage requirement so here is a picture of the modification on the new switching power supply board

Not sure exactly what it propose is in this application it might be some type of electrical noise is my guess because I do not see this very often unless it has a ground wire on the switching supply board

[sam_sam_sam]

Well the temperature controlled cooling fans are installed and the 12 volt switching power supply has been reinstalled and wired up now I just have to be reinstall the two 6 volt switching power supplies and hook them back up but I have to put more hot glue on the temperature sensor in the first one that I did because I did not put enough on it between the switching transformer and the enclosure like did in the second one so that has be redone

Then run some testing to make sure everything is working properly and then I will be back in business again

[sam_sam_sam]

Well the 8 channel battery machine is back together and hooked up to a computer in the shed working it in a rack system it is the desk model you have the option to put wheels on and when I first got it I installed the wheel but now that it is on the bench I do not want the wheels on it so I removed them in the office I had it under the desk

I now I have make the wires to the battery cell jig more permanent and more secure connections than the way I have been doing it because sometimes it gives bad results

Unfortunately I forget to take pictures of inside of switching power supply when I had it open when I put more hot glue between the switching power transformer and the metal enclosure sorry about this but I will not take it back apart but when I buy another I will take pictures of this one it is a little time consuming to remove and reinstall the switching power supplies because of so many wires that hooked up to both of them at least they color coded them so that was as bad as it could have been

[sam_sam_sam]

Well things did not go well for one of the 6 volt @ 60 amp switching power supply because I was not paying attention to a detail that I should have it has a common negative power rail that needs to be connected to each of switching power supplies and input power supply wires are red black and green on the input power supply and on the output side of each switching power supply there are red and black wires well instead of the common output side of of the two 6 volt @ 60 amps it got hooked on line side of the 12 volt @ 3 amp switching power supply instead of output side of the power supply the main fuse for battery tester blew not the switching power supply fuse go figure that would be the case

I going to fix this issue with the main fuse blowing instead of switching power supply fuse blowing because I going to move the fuses to the outside of the enclosure so that they can easily be replaced instead of having to take apart the switching power supplies apart to do this and I going to move the power indicator led light bulb to above each fuse for each switching power supply unit
I must have had the biggest brain fart in a very very long ——>


I was having an issue with one of the 6 volt @ 60 amp switching power supplies it was a lot warmer than the other 6 volt @ 60 amp switching power supply and the cooling fan was not coming on like the one were the cooling was coming on and off with a one amp load this is the one that had the major malfunction ( this switching power supply board got gutted for repair parts bin )

The switching transistors blew apart the capacitor blew apart near the switching transistors the traces basically blew off the board where the switching transistors
But here is the weird thing was I had the entire device running for hours without a load the battery testing machine until yesterday when I finally finished the individual wires for each battery cell holder so I would have a better connections

Well I powered up the battery testing machine with a external 12 volt switching power supply and checked if it was still functioning correctly I had done a discharge cycle test on each channel and this part still working correctly now I have to check if the charging circuit still working properly or not

I really do not like it when manufacturers use the same color wires for the power line input side and use the same color wires for the output side of a switching power supply and use wire sheathing ( I like wire sheathing in general and it happens to be good quality ones that they use) and only leave a very short opening just enough to hook them up to the circuit board connectors and on top of it the common negative wires that connect each switching power supplies together is very short in length and just barely enough wire

I am going to buy a 5 volt @.100 amp switching power supply that is made by Mean-well and the 100 amp output is not a misprint on my part ( one note each channel is rated for 10 amp charging capability and I want to keep this capability for each channel )

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176464285474

I am only going to have one 5 volt switching power supply


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4UcZEci4E0
( you really have to watch the very end of the video because he does a test I was thinking about doing to make sure that the protection circuit actually works or not but now I do not have to do it because he did the test ) ( However I normally only use one amp for each channel when changing each battery cell )

After I saw this video about this version of Mean-well LSR version of switching power supplies I decided to go with there very high current series of switching power supplies

I am going to use one switching power supply instead of two 6 volt @ 60 amp switching power supplies because with three switching power supplies in this enclosure is very cramped situation and not much room for cooling the switching power supplies in the first place

The switching power supplies are all Chinese made from brand names that I am not familiar with but I know the quality of Mean-well brand I am also going to change the 12 volt @ 3amp one to a Mean-well brand as well and slightly re-wire the input power supply section of this battery testing machine and make it easier to work on when I to work on it

[sam_sam_sam]

Do you think it might be a good idea that I put a 15 amp fast acting fuse on each channel because this switching power supply is 100 amp output feedback wanted

I might not work on this battery testing machine and work on the other battery testing machine that I going to use to do BMS testing jig on but I have to make a 0 to 5 volt adjustable switching power supply to do this function for single battery cells and make another adjustable switching power supply for voltages higher than 4.2 volts

[sam_sam_sam]

Well the eBay seller accepted my offer for the 5 volt @ 100 amp switching power supply so now when I get it I will rework the wiring and install two fuse holder and remove the fuse plug in that has the main fuse for the battery testing machine and make it a lot easier to work on and have better cooling for the switching power supply and hopefully it will last for a few more years

Well the other battery BMS testing jig switching power supply is making very slow progress because I need do more work on the meter module modification on the current shut board that is going to be external from the meter module because of the traces are not heavy enough to handle 20 amps I have rewire the meter power supply from switching power supply because the power supply cable is not long enough to go to the external enclosure that I am going to use and I have work on the buck converter modules in its enclosure so I still have a lot time consuming things that I still have to do get this project done and working so I can test BMS protection boards

I did a eBay search for a 0 to 5 volt and 0 to 10 or 20 amp adjustable switching power supply and these things are expensive the lower the voltage the more expensive they are really you would think it would be the other way around they want anywhere from $85.00 to over $100.00 for one I can buy a 48 volt one for around $60.00 and modify the switching transformer to 5 volts and change the voltage sensing circuit for 5 volts instead 48 volts

To day I watched a video from a woman that I have watched quite a few of her videos on modifying switching power supply she is one that sometimes makes her own switching supply boards and sometimes modified the switching power supply transformer

In this video she just modified the switching power supply transformer and modify the voltage sensing circuit and then it was ready to work at voltage that she had in mind ( in this case it was she had a 12 volt switching power supply and she needed a 5 volt switching power supply for the project that she was working on )

[sam_sam_sam]

Well the 5 volt @ 100 amp switching power supply came in the on Thursday and I was surprised how much this switching power supply weighs it not light compared to other switching power supply this size so now I have tested this power supply and also check what brand of capacitors it has in it and then install it in the battery testing machine enclosure and see what happens next

I have to modify the power supply wires because I only have 3 positive terminals and 3 negative terminals and the three input wires to power the switching power supply

[sam_sam_sam]

I did an eBay search for a 0 to 5 volt and 0 to 10 or 20 amp adjustable switching power supply and these things are expensive the lower the voltage the more expensive they are really you would think it would be the other way around they want anywhere from $85.00 to over $100.00 for one I can buy a 48 volt one for around $60.00 and modify the switching transformer to 5 volts and change the voltage sensing circuit for 5 volts instead 48 volts

To day I watched a video from a woman that I have watched quite a few of her videos on modifying switching power supply she is one that sometimes makes her own switching supply boards and sometimes modified the switching power supply transformer

In this video she just modified the switching power supply transformer and modify the voltage sensing circuit and then it was ready to work at voltage that she had in mind ( in this case it was she had a 12 volt switching power supply and she needed a 5 volt switching power supply for the project that she was working on )

I finally found the video that I was referring today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9ggK8coT4

[sam_sam_sam]

Here is a couple of pictures of the Mean-well 5 volt @ 100 amp switching power supply board front and back of it
Of course I had to recap part of it

[sam_sam_sam]

I decided to load test the Mean-well 5 volt @ 100 amp switching power supply on the battery testing machine so I can look at how steady the voltage is over time
I can see a variable voltage of 0.01 volts and only because the line voltage dips a little bit every so often this is something that I will ignore because I know what this is and is meaningless in what I am really after I should have thought about doing this on the other switching power supplies before I put them into service

I just set the voltage for 4.75 volts @ 5 amp load and let it run over night

I have a dc load tester that has two channels but one channel is not stable in current or voltage and I can not rely on it for how accurate it is and I can not plot it over time anyway
I do not know if it because it was in storage for at least 4 or 5 years now and I remember after using it for a little while today why I really have not used it very much is it is a little difficult to dial in the exact current it is very touchy for the one that is stable now both of them are stable if you have a load 10 amps or more but under that one of them is not stable at all the current varies at least 250 milliamperes span from set point plus and negative of the set point so the total span is 500 milliamperes

I can use it for just testing the output of a switching power supply because it will do 30 amps per channel I did use it on the Mean- well 5 volt @ 100 amp switching power supply and turn the load on and off several times and did not see any issues with so far but I decided to run the test that I mentioned above in the beginning of this post

Maybe when I have nothing better to do I will investigate why this unit is having issues on channel 2 and see if I can repair it so it is more accurate than what it is now

One note the switching power supply transformer is big in size and it has metal rails instead of copper traces on the circuit board I have not seen this in switching power supply before and one thing I noticed when I had load the power supply to over 60 amps for a little while it only became slightly warm to the touch and the fan did not turn on in the video I watched about this switching power supply this seems to be normal operation I could not run it for very long at 60 amps because I did not have the right gauge wire hooked up even though the wire were very short in length and they started getting very warm to the touch and I did not want to melt the insulation on the wire when I was using 30 amp load was fine doing that but not 60 amp load was pushing it

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I looked at the graph this morning and everything looks good so if I have time later I might start putting things back together and see if everything works correctly or not

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I have been spending most of my time this long weekend rearranging my shed so that I have things that are a like in the same container same type of battery cell in basically in the same area and containers this weekend and next weekend trying to finish this project hopefully by next weekend

I thought about doing this when it gets cooler but I need to find several things that I was not sure what container they were in but I found most of things that I was looking for

I also need to find some switching power supplies that I bought a while back for a project that never got started but now I need build them because I could have used it several times recently and this basically happened because of buying a new work shed for building my projects because my wife dose not want me to do this in the house anymore

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I have had the 5 volt @ 100 amp switching power supply on the battery testing machine sense Monday and it is just humming a long without any issues and racking up amp hours and watt hours and the voltage is very stable considering that I have the voltage dipping in power supply going to the house which also shows up on the graph as well as very small ^^^ not quite this drastic but extremely close together and then you see a period of time where the voltage is at straight line for a while

[sam_sam_sam]

I installed the 5 volt @ 100 amp switching power supply and hooked up one channel and set it up for charging cycle and it was charging at one amp which is what I set it to now I have install the Mean-well 12 volt @ 3 or 5 amp switching power supply but I am leaning towards the 5 amp one because I have heat sinks mounted on this board already

I found some 10 amp thermo resettable circuit breaker type that I had bought from Electronic Goldmine a while back when they had a sale on them and decided that I would leave the 10 amp glass fuse in there and remove the fuse and contacts for the fuse on plug in cord connector and fill it in with hot glue and use a black sharpie and be done with it I also going to put an LED indicator light on the front panel for the 12 and 5 volt switching power supply because this battery testing machine does not have a LCD screen like the other battery testing machine do it only has lighted on/off switch which does not really tell me anything about if have voltage on the 5 and 12 volt rails

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I have both switching power supplies installed and I have the two power indicators lights installed and I have it charging 8 battery cells and the graph is looking great now the first time around ( instead of having to move battery cells around to get a good connection)

This has been a lot of work and it has been a challenge doing this project

I still have to wire dress the inside of enclosure but it is very quiet now with the temperature controlled cooling fans and it is moving air across the enclosure you can feel it pulling air and you can feel air flowing out the enclosure

I just went out to the shed several times and looked at the progress of the battery cells on the battery testing machine that I just got done working on and it already throttling down on the current like it suppose and it just now finally finished and turned off the charging circuit to the battery cells like it suppose to do so it looks like it is functioning properly again

Because I have a lot of battery cells that I need to test for a project that I want to build for a battery pack for my iPad for when we loose power I can run for several days without having to charge the battery pack I have a couple of them now that I did a post about a couple of years ago but unfortunately the issue with these battery packs is that the battery fuel gauge does not work correctly with the size of these battery packs and I going to redo them so that the fuel gauge works correctly again

I find some 18650 battery cell holder that have pins that can be used on a circuit board I need 20 of them I already have the circuit board for the holder I just do not have holder yet when I have some money again I will get some so I can build the battery cell holder board and the battery pack controller for a IPAD and iPhone that I bought from Walmart ( on clearance because they do not sell them anymore ) about 5 years ago probably by now it has pouch battery cell in them and I not real fond of this type of battery cell because I have several that have swollen and are not good anymore in fact I really need to get rid of them properly which I not sure exactly how and what to do with them if anyone knows the correct way to do please feel free to explain what to do with them


I hope that the battery charge controller that I plan on using dose not have a wattage counter on it because I will have the same issue again with the battery packs that I plan on building

In fact you can see part of battery cell holder on a cutting board on the picture above when I have it completely done I will show a picture of the setup that I am using to test battery cells

[sam_sam_sam]

I need to tidy up the wiring in the battery testing machine that I worked on yesterday and put it back in the rack cart and put everything back together so that I can get started testing battery cells again for the project that I mentioned above and some other battery projects that I just recently bought for this other project that I need to order the BMS protection boards for and finish rearranging my new shed so I can get back into working on projects that I have in mind to do now that it slowly gets cooler and turn off the air conditioning in the new shed and only have it on when I am working in it right now I have to keep it on all the time because I store batteries in it now but when it gets cooler I usually keep the door open and work in this way which I prefer to do anyway with out having to run the air conditioning unit

[sam_sam_sam]

Here are some pictures of the modifications that were done on this battery testing machine and the battery cell jig and it hooked up and the test results from the charging test on eight battery cells

The picture of the inside of the battery testing machine is with the 12 volt @ 3 amp switching power supply but it is not the Mean-well switching power that was installed I just did not take a picture of it now the way it is but before I put the cover on and install it back the computer rack cart I will take a picture of it the way it is now

I have two battery cell jigs one for 18650 and 21700 battery cell holder both versions are set up the same way I just do not have a set of wires for this one yet I to order one that has the ZEKtech battery cell holder that is really meant for bigger size battery cells that I also have an will also start using as well but this setup is not cheap but the connector wires are very good quality and I do not mind paying for this