SegwayChat - View Single Post - My NiMH -> LiPo battery rebuild for i167. Success!

Ground Loop · 01-12-2011, 05:35 AM

First, this is what the PCB inside the battery looks like:

It's quite a bit more than I was expecting, and dashed any hopes I had of a full roll-my-own battery pack. Wow.

Notice the steel battery tabs at the top, which are bent over the top of the PCB. For my second battery pack conversion, I thought I'd try to be cleaner and replace the battery tabs entirely, by soldering the 12ga wire to the PCB.

That wasn't an effort I'd like to repeat. It required drilling holes in the back of the battery just to get to the solder tabs:

The resulting battery looked fine, and had fewer sharp edges, but was a more strained fit with the large wires coming over the top:

And the Zippy/HobbyKing XT60 connectors are actually pretty awesome, especially since they come on the batteries already. HK sells the female connectors, with leads already soldered, so this is pure Win. I like them.

I think I'm going to make a third assembly, using XT60 connectors (again) and soldering to the cut-off battery tabs. Then I'll have all 12 batteries on the same connector, which would be nice for massively-parallel charging.

If I was doing this over again, and not so bent on using cheap $8 batteries, I think 4000mAh or even 5000mAh of the right dimensions would be the way to go.

I'd like to find a way to bring the required leads out of the Segway for charging without so much screwdriver time, too.

01-12-2011, 05:35 AM	#19
Ground Loop Member Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: San Diego, California, USA. Posts: 517	First, this is what the PCB inside the battery looks like: It's quite a bit more than I was expecting, and dashed any hopes I had of a full roll-my-own battery pack. Wow. Notice the steel battery tabs at the top, which are bent over the top of the PCB. For my second battery pack conversion, I thought I'd try to be cleaner and replace the battery tabs entirely, by soldering the 12ga wire to the PCB. That wasn't an effort I'd like to repeat. It required drilling holes in the back of the battery just to get to the solder tabs: The resulting battery looked fine, and had fewer sharp edges, but was a more strained fit with the large wires coming over the top: And the Zippy/HobbyKing XT60 connectors are actually pretty awesome, especially since they come on the batteries already. HK sells the female connectors, with leads already soldered, so this is pure Win. I like them. I think I'm going to make a third assembly, using XT60 connectors (again) and soldering to the cut-off battery tabs. Then I'll have all 12 batteries on the same connector, which would be nice for massively-parallel charging. If I was doing this over again, and not so bent on using cheap $8 batteries, I think 4000mAh or even 5000mAh of the right dimensions would be the way to go. I'd like to find a way to bring the required leads out of the Segway for charging without so much screwdriver time, too.