Quote:
Originally Posted by Ground Loop
It's been a while since I posted, and indeed, since I rode my Segway. Hi y'all!
I've purchased six $400 NiMH packs over the years, and continue to disparage the battery design as the weak link in Segway -- certainly from an operating cost standpoint. (If anyone of the 60 NiMH cells falls out of balance and goes bad, the whole pack is junk..) With the batteries discontinued and nothing to lose, I thought I'd try building my own pack. This is the result:
For now, I'm using six $9 3S LiPo batteries, each 2200mAh and nominally 11.1v. It's a fit! The pack is much lighter, and I remove the packs to charge them on a proper balancing charger, but my Segway is road-worthy once again!
Of course, I can't use either of my Segway battery chargers to top off, and a short circuit would burn down the whole show, but at $100 all-up, I'm in business! Most importantly, when one cell fails, I can diagnose & service just that pack without discarding the rest.
With a little more Dremel work and tighter wiring, I think I can fit 5000mAh cells or larger into the same space. |
Well done! This is a really interesting piece of work! Do post how it performs and what sort of range you are seeing. I cannot remember off the top of my head what the capacity of the standard NiMH and lithium packs is. How big a charger do you need for such a pack? Ideally you need to have an external charging socket on each pack so you can charge without dismantling. While clearly this isn't a perfect solution, given that you cannot fly with the lithium packs anyway, why not go this route, even though it is a bit 'quick and dirty'.
Driving around on my second set of lithiums, now fading into senescence after three years, I definitely agree with you that battery costs are the elephant in the room when considering the running costs of a seg. This may not be the perfect solution but it definitely will move the level of knowledge forward.