Thingiverse
18650 Power Bank Battery Charger by 3dmachineman
by Thingiverse
Last crawled date: 4 years, 8 months ago
Greetings,
I'm the 3dmachineman, and this is my very first design.
I utilized https://www.tinkercad.com/ to create the stl file, and Cura to splice and print on an Ender 3 V2.
I remixed the PCB fitting (PCBA 2A H961-U) from:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4155808
by simply adding it to my box construction, and increased the button hole size due to improper alignment.
With zero experience, I felt ok with using this already designed thing, as it surely saved me a lot of time, and my CAD level is entry level at this time.
You can find those PCB BMS boards on Amazon. Here's the link where I bought this board. It works good and no issues at all for me. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08GKKXPML/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I don't have a way to spot weld 18650 cells at the moment, so I wanted to create an all in one unit where no welding would be necessary.
For this task I would need to design a cell casing (or find one already made.)
In this application I used a pre designed casing:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2339441
I looked at some others first, and in my opinion they are nice but over engineered, maybe a little too snug for my liking.
This assortment linked above is very nice. There are sizes for different types of cells, with different numbers of slots.
It's a great design assortment for these types of projects.
I've included the single 18650 casing, but there are clusters available in the link above if desired.
I found the best way for connectivity is to strip wire, wind it up, and create hand made coils.
It's not very difficult, ensure you create your coils with the twist, you'll understand what I mean if you go the wrong way :)
Your hands might be a little sore afterwards, but this method is very good, and better than the first method I tried, which was just stripped the ends of wires and looping through.
What resulted was poor connectivity and actual loss of connection and balance during the construction!
Don't make that mistake, the spring is not strong on these, so having a tight fit in the design is a good idea for these.
I provided a picture of how I lined the interior with padding. I ended up removing side padding later on, as it made the fit too snug.
This is not necessary but a good idea if you are planning to take the bank on the go a lot. Some padding will protect against damaging the battery in a drop, or worse..
One thing to note, is the orientation of the display on the board, with how I set this up, resulted in the batteries being upside down, and the padding pretty useless.
It's not a big deal since it won't be moved around much , but assembling your battery outside of the unit, and then flipping around is a good idea for this design.
Hot glue is an absolute necessity for this to work.
I wanted something easy, requiring no screws. For some this might be a gripe, but please go easy on me because this is my first design, and not adding screws was because I wanted to hurry up and finish this, basically I cut corners and I'm ok with that :D
I decided to share this because I believe I am creative, and maybe someone else might want to make a battery bank but is thinking "I don't have a spot welder.."
but maybe they have a 3D printer instead of a spot welder like me, which is maybe backwards, but in this world of 3D printing, I am learning how to find short cuts and ways to make the impossible possible.
So, here is a battery bank with no spot welder needed.
I used base settings for an Ender 3 V2 for low quality print.
That should do fine, or up the quality if you want it to look nicer.
I am printing in PLA with first layer at 217C nozzle, 66C bed, then 215C and 55C bed temps.
In stating that this is my first design, it's imperative for me to state that I used other peoples designs to help my design come into existence, that is; my design is a mash up of my own work with other peoples designs, whos works I've linked above for attribution.
Happy printing!
I'm the 3dmachineman, and this is my very first design.
I utilized https://www.tinkercad.com/ to create the stl file, and Cura to splice and print on an Ender 3 V2.
I remixed the PCB fitting (PCBA 2A H961-U) from:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4155808
by simply adding it to my box construction, and increased the button hole size due to improper alignment.
With zero experience, I felt ok with using this already designed thing, as it surely saved me a lot of time, and my CAD level is entry level at this time.
You can find those PCB BMS boards on Amazon. Here's the link where I bought this board. It works good and no issues at all for me. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08GKKXPML/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I don't have a way to spot weld 18650 cells at the moment, so I wanted to create an all in one unit where no welding would be necessary.
For this task I would need to design a cell casing (or find one already made.)
In this application I used a pre designed casing:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2339441
I looked at some others first, and in my opinion they are nice but over engineered, maybe a little too snug for my liking.
This assortment linked above is very nice. There are sizes for different types of cells, with different numbers of slots.
It's a great design assortment for these types of projects.
I've included the single 18650 casing, but there are clusters available in the link above if desired.
I found the best way for connectivity is to strip wire, wind it up, and create hand made coils.
It's not very difficult, ensure you create your coils with the twist, you'll understand what I mean if you go the wrong way :)
Your hands might be a little sore afterwards, but this method is very good, and better than the first method I tried, which was just stripped the ends of wires and looping through.
What resulted was poor connectivity and actual loss of connection and balance during the construction!
Don't make that mistake, the spring is not strong on these, so having a tight fit in the design is a good idea for these.
I provided a picture of how I lined the interior with padding. I ended up removing side padding later on, as it made the fit too snug.
This is not necessary but a good idea if you are planning to take the bank on the go a lot. Some padding will protect against damaging the battery in a drop, or worse..
One thing to note, is the orientation of the display on the board, with how I set this up, resulted in the batteries being upside down, and the padding pretty useless.
It's not a big deal since it won't be moved around much , but assembling your battery outside of the unit, and then flipping around is a good idea for this design.
Hot glue is an absolute necessity for this to work.
I wanted something easy, requiring no screws. For some this might be a gripe, but please go easy on me because this is my first design, and not adding screws was because I wanted to hurry up and finish this, basically I cut corners and I'm ok with that :D
I decided to share this because I believe I am creative, and maybe someone else might want to make a battery bank but is thinking "I don't have a spot welder.."
but maybe they have a 3D printer instead of a spot welder like me, which is maybe backwards, but in this world of 3D printing, I am learning how to find short cuts and ways to make the impossible possible.
So, here is a battery bank with no spot welder needed.
I used base settings for an Ender 3 V2 for low quality print.
That should do fine, or up the quality if you want it to look nicer.
I am printing in PLA with first layer at 217C nozzle, 66C bed, then 215C and 55C bed temps.
In stating that this is my first design, it's imperative for me to state that I used other peoples designs to help my design come into existence, that is; my design is a mash up of my own work with other peoples designs, whos works I've linked above for attribution.
Happy printing!