CR123A Battery Charging Tray by teknokraze

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

I had 4 LiPo CR123A 3.7V rechargeable batteries laying around but no way to charge them. I started using them in my UV Flashlight for curing Bondic Plastic Weld and AlumiUV in various hobby applications but now they were depleted.
I could have bought a charger but this provided a nice challenge. I decided to make a parallel charging tray for these batteries to use with my ISDT Smart Charger I have for my drone hobby. I chose parallel to keep it simple so I wouldn't have to incorporate a balancing lead for the charger. Plus this way it'll charge fine whether I have one battery or four in there.
The tray parts were 3D Printed on my Tevo Tornado out of PLA,
Slicer: Cura 3.4
Temps: HE 198º - B 60º
Layer Height: 0.2mm
Infill: 15%
Cooling Fan: 50% inital layer, 100% afterwards
Supports: none
Raft: no
The Solder Rails I cut out on my CNC machine out of 0.4mm PCB board. I've included the SVG file in the thing files. For the upright battery contacts I just used Copper Foil Tape and put a bead of solder connecting it with the rail to ensure better connection.
Wires were 14AWG fed through the holes before soldering to the rail. I left some slack and soldered the wires to the rail before pulling tight through the wire guide and securing the rails to the base with Cyanoacrylate , (Super/Crazy), glue. I soldered an XT60 connector to the wires to suit my charger.
Once the wires and rails were soldered and glued into place I slid the Batter Tray into the base ensuring the Positive and Negative indicators were correctly orientated.
And that's all there is to it! Enjoy.