Posted 15 January 2018 - 07:17 PM

EDIT: I'm keeping the rest of this here for posterity only; DO NOT DO this mod! At least not with 20v packs and/or without substantially more knowledge on electronics and battery technology than I possess. I've tried the packs on a startlingly low powered blaster (stock motor Barricade) and burned the battery out so that it shows a temperature fault and will not charge.

I've since repaired the adapter; it appears I had a short on the battery's thermal sensor and I believe it's working correctly now. Continue with caution.

Project Overview:

This is a partial writeup on how I made use of a 20v Lion power tool pack as a ~3s rigged flywheel battery pack with an adapter. You can pretty easily adapt the process to any power tool brand/capacity, so I'm not going into specifics. If you don't know what you're doing with the power tools/systems involved, don't try it without asking someone who does for help.

INTRO & BACKGROUND:

I'm showing it on my 3s Strayvan, though because I wired it into an XT60 I can plug it into any other blaster I build in the future, or any other blaster using an XT60 running ~3s. It has also worked on my 12v/stock rayvan cage mk 13 prototype.

I know a good number of people don't like using Lipo because of the perceived danger involved in using the cells. I don't blame anyone for doing that; I don't actually keep the one large lipo I own in my house. My buddy keeps it for me, along with the charger. This arrangement worked fine to war with, but as I am always tinkering, it didn't last long: I couldn't keep asking him to charge the lipo so I could experiment with the mk 13 (current primary project). And I didn't really want to get into a charger system just for the one battery. So I began researching whether using power tool packs was, in fact, a good idea. It seemed to be, so here we are!

Process:

Time required: ~1-2 hours

Tools:

Soldiering Iron, 3rd hand

Wire snippers/strippers

Drivers as required by your tool system

Knife

Materials:

Sacrificial cordless power-tool

14-16ga stranded wire; I use primary wire

Heat-shrink

Battery connector of your choice (here, XT60)

Optionally, webbing and buckles and screws. These were scrounged from backpacks and stuff I had lying around.

Here it is:

I used a Harbor Freight Bauer LED worklight. It cost me $10 or so, sometimes it'll be on sale for less but not as often as other no-brand Harbor Freight stuff (20% coupons don't work). To go with it, I had previously picked up a Bauer Driver Combo pack (Drill, 1.5 Ah battery, charger) on sale for $65 or so. A spare worklight is adjacent to the modified light.

To do the conversion, I opened the light up, removed the unnessecary light parts, and rewired the plug with my heavier-duty wire (being a light, the wire was pretty thin before). I also had to connect both pins of the positive and negative sides, as they weren't connected in the light (but were in other tools, I'm pretty sure I checked).

Then I just ran the wire out and attached the XT60. Screwed in the webbing and I was all set.

Here it is with a battery:

These batteries are nice: hard shell, built-in charge indicator, if one is bad you can just walk it back to HF and they'll replace it no questions within their usual return window. The charger plugs into a wall outlet and has indicators to tell you if the pack is bad or not, if it's too hot/cold, and if it's charged/charging. Charge time for me is only a couple hours.

Here it is on my Strayvan, as you can see a little bulkier than if I'd integrated it, way more than if I'd used a pack inside (but who cares?):

I didn't integrate it because I'd realized that $10 a pop is way more than $1 a pop for the XT60. This also caused me to realize it might be possible to wire up a split pigtail to several blasters on my person and keep the pack on my belt - not that it wouldn't also be possible with a Lipo, given a hard-shell belt pack.

Questions, comments, and criticism welcome as always.

Edited by Meaker VI, 13 December 2018 - 05:35 PM.