Rack mounted ECB-A10H plus several buck converters set to different voltages with a 12 and 24 volt switching power supply

[sam_sam_sam]

I might have some time for a couple of weekends to work on my computer rail cart having to work the last 5 weekends in a row we had the owners of company come and paid us a visit so we had to get the building in ship shape for the visit the for the most part was good

I took off Monday and next week is a short week and hopefully we get that weekend off as well so hopefully I can get this project done and another project can also get done as well or at least this is the plan

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I put the second computer rail cart together and now I bought two sets of front to back self rail sets to make another shelf all the way across both computer rail carts

Hope I get it sometime next week or the following weekend and I can finally finish this project and get my battery testing machines back up and running again

[sam_sam_sam]

Well when I went to Home Depot again near my house I was able to find two sheets of metal that I needed I need to go to another Home Depot tomorrow and see if I can find one more piece of metal to make the shelf that I need for the two computers one for each shelf and will have room for the miscellaneous stuff related to the battery testing machine

Then I need to find two more pieces of metal that are narrow to join the the two computer carts together so are as one unit and put tv on top of the computer carts so I do not have to worry about the tv falling off the carts

When I have the computer cart finished I will post some pictures of it

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I got two more sets of sleeving rails in mail over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and this morning I installed them on the two computer carts now I have to cut the metal sheet to fit in between the rails and still need to find one more 16 gauge 18’X12’ metal sheet at another so I do not have to cut more than once in half and they will match the other two pieces of metal that I have now and even 16 gauge sheet metal needs metal strips to support it

It will be nice when I get this project completed and move to another project and finish this battery testing machine computer cart and start testing battery cells again

[sam_sam_sam]

I now have to work on the next part of this project I might start with the layout how I going to setup the enclosure and where things will go and layout out where the enclosure front opening will be for the controls and deploys for me this is very important to do but it is very time consuming process and progress is very slow going

On slightly different note last night I was watching a YouTube video about taking several 18650 battery chargers and stacking them for more current for faster charging speed this might be okay for very large capacity battery packs but not for single battery cells I would not even consider this option idea for a battery charger that does not monitor the battery temperature of the battery pack

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I bought a “8 ft. Landscape Timber” ( I had it cut in half for the cutting jig ) from Home Depot to make a sawing jig for cutting out windows in the computer rail rack cart so I can put together the BMS protection board testing station I have the hole cutter bit but need landscape timber so I have space for the jigsaw blade while cutting out the opening and then I will put plexiglass glass over the cut outs so I can have all of the electronics in one enclosure switching power supply battery testing machine monitoring module with the switching power supply for it and buck converter modules and selector switches and other miscellaneous components as well

I going to start this part of the project on Christmas Day morning while I am cooking some dinner items on my pellet smoker grill which I have to keep an eye on every so often while it is cooking

I had to replace the pole for the camera for front door and the two garage doors because it had rotted away because I had been using those landscaping timber poles for this purpose but I found something at Lowe's store that was made for fencing that has an aluminum frame core and a plastic cover (aluminum is not cheap to buy unfortunately ) mounted the camera and the electrical box to the aluminum frame and a 8-32 tap and tapped the aluminum frame to hold both of them it turned out very nice and professional looking

I also fixed the light between the two garage building I put the electronic eye bracket ( the bracket home made ) underneath the gutters and over the gutter and under the shingle and put two screws in the roof and under the gutter into the wood over hang so it is not going anywhere and now I do not have it cycling anymore

I finally finished both of these projects today so now I have time to work on battery BMS testing machine and get this project started and hopefully finished soon

[sam_sam_sam]

Battery holders for the battery 21700 is finally finished but now I have to modify the Milwaukee single row battery pack BMS protection board to be able to accept the BMS board and the multi voltage monitor module so I can charge and watch the voltage on each battery cell rail

I do not have all of 18650 battery holders to start with that battery BMS protection board and the battery holders on the series of batteries yet but this will probably not get started until next month ran out of project money again

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I started to put the 5U .computer rack enclosure together for the battery testing machines and ran into a problem is the person cutting out the opening had asked if it matters which way is up and I said as far as I know it does not matter but unfortunately it does matter and I had to drill out the tack welds there are just three of them on the top rail and three on the bottom rail which I drilled out and will put three screws back on each rail for the top and bottom rails but it probably a good thing that this happened so now I can remove the front panel without having to take everything off to get to just the front panel because anything that needs to be hooked up to the front panel will have some type of connector on it to make this as easy as possible

I was going to put the switching power supply on the inside of enclosure and I might still do this but to fit everything in this enclosure it going to be a little cramped for the mosfets / heat sink controller boards and the switching power supplies for the main controller boards I have to decide whether or not to abandon the idea of an extra switching power supply for the enclosure that has two testing machines in it the other enclosure only has one battery testing machine and two battery cells meter modules I will have enough room for everything I want to do to this enclosure

I have to lay everything out in the enclosure and see how everything will fit and drill holes for the mosfet heat sink controller boards with its plastic insulators pads and plastic inserts and the plastic stand-offs for the switching power supplies and the power switches and I have decided how I want to do the battery cells meter modules input wires to the outside world and keep it looking professional in appearance this is one very important consideration that I have for this particular part of this project

I did find the 18650 battery holders that I had missed placed but still have not found the 21700 battery holders but I only had a couple of them left from the battery testing jig that I had made a while back but I have redesigned it to fit into the shelf on the computer rack cart when I made the first one I did have this as a consideration but now that am restricted to have everything on the computer cart this is very big consideration but I will figure out some way to reuse the cutting board for some kind a jig for some battery testing for use in the shed

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I was going to buy a 0 to 5 volt 0 to 60 amp adjustable switching power supply in this particular version of this model because it has the capability to adjust the current with a special function switch

Here is the version I wanted but the 0 to 5 volt @ 60 amp version is not available again and when it was the other day it with a shipping cost of $300.00 this in not a miss print

https://www.ebay.com/itm/39508637629...3ABFBM9N_XoM5l

I was able to still find one at the price that I was used to seeing and purchasing it before I can find them anymore at the price I am willing to pay for one with free shipping

I have been putting off buying one about a year now hoping that the price would come down a little bit they have on the 48 volt version from time I have two of them so I did not need another one

The reason buying the voltage that I want to use you have more control of the voltage and current of the switching power supply when using it as a battery charger when using a diode to block feedback into the switching power supply if it happens to be unplugged from the mains power supply

I decided that using a buck converter was not the best option for what I wanted to do because I would have to modify the pot controls to a 10 or 20 turn version with a bigger knob on it and these switching power supplies are already setup the way I want to use them

[sam_sam_sam]

One limitation on these voltage current adjustable switching power supply is that the current output is not very stable below 150 milliamperes it fluctuates are noticeable and the battery testing machine has a lower current level of 100 milliamperes not a real big deal but and unless you want to do very slow charging then it becomes a very big issue I have not found a solution for this issue yet and maybe there is one unless I do a LM317 in the current mode but this will not solve the 100 milliamperes limitation on the battery testing machine unfortunately