oh,I did have a few questions. I'm building a pack just like you did in this video,but can I connect them in a way that my end terminals (+ and -) are both on top? A few of my cells have less than perfect shrink on them and I was wondering if you printed your own custom labels or if you buy them that way (and if so,where could I have some made?)? I loved how thorough you were in your vid,unfortunately I've found that to be a rare thing in my often endless searches.
Hi Frank. There are lots of 18650 project videos out there, but I really relate best to your style of teaching. Thanks for taking the time to video and share this information. My project is to replace my 125ah SLA aux battery in my little Geo Tracker with 18650s. I am looking for the spreadsheet you show at 09:08. I was able to find the harvester sheet, but not the one at 09:08. Could you post a link to that one? Thanks
Thanks for you thoughtful comment. Oh that spreadsheet.... That sheet is used for my rough calculations. I can give it to you in it's current state but is is a mess. I need to clean it up before releasing it to the world. If your eager to get a copy, can you visit my website a send me a privet message and I will email you a link to the file? thediyengineer.com/contact
Thank you man! This was really helpful!😎✨🙏👍 I have 80 x 18650 batteries, a 24v MPPT & a 24v Pure sine wave inverter... Any recommendations for building multiple 24v packs to use to charge laptops, phones, maybe a lamp...or a kettle? I thought I could have a bunch charging by solar while I use the others?
Hello ! please help me with a tip i need a bms but i don't know how many volts and how many amps it should have, for a li ion battery 14s 51.8v 40ah i have a brushless motor sss56104 790kv 6000w and a pro marine ESC 300A..Thank you !
Great video Frank. Thanks for sharing. Questions - 1. How do you decide the capacity of each cell. Do you have something to read it quick, or you need to drain each to find out. 2. How do you charge the battery pack? I guess once you soldered it, you need to charge it as a pack. Thanks.
That is a little long story... Not really, I have a 3 part video on determining cell capacity. You can watch it here: goo.gl/6hmYrh I tend to be a little OCD so please be patient with me. :-) Thanks for watching, Frank
Thanks Frank. Will check them out. I want to build a 20 Amp 12 v pack with the 18650 cells. But the cells on the market claim they are 9800, 5000, 6000 mAh etc are way over what they really are. Thus I need to find a way to find out their real capacity before I decide how many cell and size of the pack. Thanks again
You don’t need an inverter. Most technology uses less than 120v. What you need to buy is a buck converter. Which has less power request with more tweaked step up step up. Most power bricks in most products step DOWN.. the volts. If you read the input and output on the power brick they will give you the voltage it needs to run. If they don’t and it’s a straight plug then they have an internal that does it. Typically looking for a motor replacement for the product will give you stats needed. But prime example. Laptops plug into 120 but the power brick prob outputs 20v so if I use a dc buck converter to go from my battery pack to a cable ..then set the voltage on the buck converter it will work without the ac power brick. Cell phones that have usb cables take 5v even if they come with the power brick. All it does is downstep the voltage. Good video. Your tools are the same way.. find the operating voltage then get a buck converter and you won’t need a massive invertor
You should series voltage to 14.4 to 14.8 v to replace a 12v lead acid. 7.2 to 7.4 for 6v etc. Then combine series sets in parallel to increase amp hours.
Hi, Just come across your video as looking into making my own battery packs. A novice so doing my research at moment. One question, please, when recharging these packs do you simply plug in the charger to the outlet socket and it knows to charge as opposed to discharge e.g. supply power? I don’t appear to understand the charging of these packs. Thank you.
Charging lithium is easy. You just connect a power supply positive to battery terminal positive and negative to battery terminal negative. If the voltage of the power supply is higher than the battery the energy will flow into the battery. When the voltages ends up matching the battery will start taking less and less power. This is when you are done charging. So if you want to charge a 1 cell lithium you connect a 4.2v power supply. A 2 cell lithium battery would need an 8.4v power supply. Ect... Make sure you are using an actual voltage controlled power supply because charging lithium over 4.2v per cell is how they explode. Because of this I set my charger power supply to 4.1v which only charges them 95% but is much safer and is easier on the battery.
So for a battery pack for a bluetooth speaker using an amp running 12-14v id use this configuration u just showed but increasing the number of batterys in the cells instead of cells if i want more playtime?
so id go with 4cells and 5 batterys in each cell to get around 14 volts and a good amount of mah with real 18650 batterys? Oh and what would be the best way to charge them?
What brand and model is your inverter. It might be able to handle those batteries fully charged as the ratings they give have given are an ideal range, also might be worth contacting the manufacturer to find out if there is an adjustment you can do to the buck/boost converter inside the unit to allow for that higher input of fully charged batteries. Another option is adding your own buck converter to step the voltage down, you can feed it a range of voltages and have a fixed output, then feed that to the inverter. Not sure if a single step down dc to dc (buck converter) as able to cover the amps from all battery banks, if not then each bank could have a buck converter. EDIT:: Ah I see you have a KRIËGER KR1500 inverter with 15.5volt over volt shutdown. It's worth looking in to the Buck converters.
KRIËGER KR1500 1500 Watt 12V Dual Power Inverter Input Voltage Range 10 - 15.5 VDC Over Voltage Shutdown Over 15.5 VDC Under Voltage Shutdown Under 10 VDC Low Voltage Alarm Audible at 10.6 VDC www.kriegermfg.com/product/kr1500/
Those are some of the topics I cover in my videos. Keep watching and you will get it... To build a 12v 107ah battery you will need 200 2100 mAh 18650 cells and you could build them in a couple configurations but in essance the battery would be a 50p4s.
excellent video. Thumbs up. I was worried about my battery pack being over volted with a 4S and under volted with a 3S. Can i just go with a 4S and put some kind of a voltage controller on it that only allows a certain amount of volts to come out?
Yes, you can use buck converters like these: www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_14?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=step+down+buck+converter&sprefix=step+down+buck%2Caps%2C213&crid=109681OKT5QQ3 You also need to know what the limits are of the device(s) you be using with your batteries. If it is a device you would normally use in a automobile you would be safe with voltages around 13.7 to 14.7 volts.
Thanks so much for the answer although my battery pack needs to be wired for 60 amps and so I assume i will need a buck converter that says 60 or more amps right? Also when wiring this together would I actually run the power through the buck converter or would I just connect the buck converter to the wires running from the battery to the motor being powered.? Thanks in advance for your time and any help you can give
+pandarama67 yes, you will need a converter that can handle more than 60 amps. I would also recommend a fuse or a breaker will prevent to many amps from flowing. You will need to refer to wireing instructions that should come with your converter. I hope this helps Frank
Yes it helps and I am subing to your channel and thanks so much. I hate to keep bothering you but I have one more related question. I found a buck converter that will do the 60 amps of current draw and the 12 volts output that I need but the input voltage is 24 V. If my lithium ion battery pack is 15.8 will it be ok to wire into the buck converter with this voltage since it is less then 24 V, or should I wire the battery closer to 24V like maybe a 7 series to make 24.9V before wiring into the buck converter?
@@pandarama67 I'm pretty sure it means it steps down from a Max of 24v, so anything lower then 24v going into the stepdown should be fine. Its probably good for you to watch so TH-cam videos explaining them and how they work. Cheers
+Jose Garcia, I have cell packs made from different cell manufacturers, but I make sure and build my cell packs with cells that are close to the same size.
Frank, what a great video, You mentioned that you where only going to charge your pack to 90% 15.4v How are you doing that? Does your BMS have an adjustable setting? If so what are you BMS are you using for the 4s5p?
That would work if I didn't need a lot of amperage. Plus, it becomes a little more difficult when it comes to charging. One of the things I try to do is keep the costs down. When adding more electronics it costs more and it adds more fail points. Thank you for watching and commenting.
I'm just using "Avery Clear Return Address Labels for Laser Printers 2/3" x 1-3/4", (15695) amzn.to/2G4EPdd. I print the cell details on the label, then I put the label on the cell and then I cover the cell with a clear cell wrap. I cover this in detail in this video: th-cam.com/video/Dwz8IzxVQWs/w-d-xo.html. Thanks for watching.
Excellent. Probably the most comprehensive / thorough explanation on youtube.
Very good overview of building battery packs ... I like the calculator you listed and thought it met the intent of building new packs.
What a beautiful pack behind ;) 👍
best video on building lithium packs ive seen so far
Nice and thorough vid,I haven't found that in my search for building my battery.
oh,I did have a few questions. I'm building a pack just like you did in this video,but can I connect them in a way that my end terminals (+ and -) are both on top? A few of my cells have less than perfect shrink on them and I was wondering if you printed your own custom labels or if you buy them that way (and if so,where could I have some made?)? I loved how thorough you were in your vid,unfortunately I've found that to be a rare thing in my often endless searches.
The position of the end connection would depend on the design. You can see my video on rewraping cells here: th-cam.com/video/Dwz8IzxVQWs/w-d-xo.html
This video was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you
+What Happened? Haha thanks for watching!!! Frank
Thanks for the info, ideal and well delivered.
I'm going 4s too for a backup system to keep the fridge running with the PGE outages
Hi Frank. There are lots of 18650 project videos out there, but I really relate best to your style of teaching. Thanks for taking the time to video and share this information. My project is to replace my 125ah SLA aux battery in my little Geo Tracker with 18650s. I am looking for the spreadsheet you show at 09:08. I was able to find the harvester sheet, but not the one at 09:08. Could you post a link to that one? Thanks
Thanks for you thoughtful comment. Oh that spreadsheet.... That sheet is used for my rough calculations. I can give it to you in it's current state but is is a mess. I need to clean it up before releasing it to the world. If your eager to get a copy, can you visit my website a send me a privet message and I will email you a link to the file? thediyengineer.com/contact
thanks, will do
Thank you for sharing your knowledge
Thank You!
Thank you man! This was really helpful!😎✨🙏👍 I have 80 x 18650 batteries, a 24v MPPT & a 24v Pure sine wave inverter... Any recommendations for building multiple 24v packs to use to charge laptops, phones, maybe a lamp...or a kettle? I thought I could have a bunch charging by solar while I use the others?
Hi. How you get to know the different mAh ratings of All the batteries. What we are getting in datasheet is different that what you have marked
Hello ! please help me with a tip i need a bms but i don't know how many volts and how many amps it should have, for a li ion battery 14s 51.8v 40ah i have a brushless motor sss56104 790kv 6000w and a pro marine ESC 300A..Thank you !
You should definitely look at 14s arrangement for a 48V inverter.
What charging module do you use in charging the bigger portable pack please?
I was wondering if the mAh being used is the Discharge Capacity or the Charge Capacity from the LiitoKala Smart Charger/Tester?
3v 160amp per stack?
Very good video. But I strongly disagree about soldering to the batteries. the heat will damage the cells. Always spot weld, it is the safest method.
this was very helpful thank you !!
thank youo so much for your explanation;this helpedme so much
Excellent Video Frank. I am new to this and I will view them all. Frank, can you share information on how you re-brand your cells please?
Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you... Have see this video yet? th-cam.com/video/Dwz8IzxVQWs/w-d-xo.html It covers most of my process.
Thanks Frank. I understand that you have so many questions to address. I almost gave up hope but thanks for the reply and the link.
Thanks this was really helpful. Now I know how to used Re-packing website.
I'm glad it was helpful, thanks for watching.
Hello my friend, I would like to ask you, is it possible to collect 2000 mAh batteries with 1500 mAh in the same package?
Great video Frank. Thanks for sharing. Questions - 1. How do you decide the capacity of each cell. Do you have something to read it quick, or you need to drain each to find out. 2. How do you charge the battery pack? I guess once you soldered it, you need to charge it as a pack. Thanks.
That is a little long story... Not really, I have a 3 part video on determining cell capacity. You can watch it here: goo.gl/6hmYrh I tend to be a little OCD so please be patient with me. :-) Thanks for watching, Frank
Thanks Frank. Will check them out. I want to build a 20 Amp 12 v pack with the 18650 cells. But the cells on the market claim they are 9800, 5000, 6000 mAh etc are way over what they really are. Thus I need to find a way to find out their real capacity before I decide how many cell and size of the pack. Thanks again
You don’t need an inverter. Most technology uses less than 120v. What you need to buy is a buck converter. Which has less power request with more tweaked step up step up. Most power bricks in most products step DOWN.. the volts. If you read the input and output on the power brick they will give you the voltage it needs to run. If they don’t and it’s a straight plug then they have an internal that does it. Typically looking for a motor replacement for the product will give you stats needed.
But prime example. Laptops plug into 120 but the power brick prob outputs 20v so if I use a dc buck converter to go from my battery pack to a cable ..then set the voltage on the buck converter it will work without the ac power brick. Cell phones that have usb cables take 5v even if they come with the power brick. All it does is downstep the voltage. Good video. Your tools are the same way.. find the operating voltage then get a buck converter and you won’t need a massive invertor
You should series voltage to 14.4 to 14.8 v to replace a 12v lead acid. 7.2 to 7.4 for 6v etc. Then combine series sets in parallel to increase amp hours.
My plan too but how do you charge to 90% of 16.8 without sitting there watching a meter?
A bench power supply set to 15.1v would accomplish this.
Hi, Just come across your video as looking into making my own battery packs. A novice so doing my research at moment. One question, please, when recharging these packs do you simply plug in the charger to the outlet socket and it knows to charge as opposed to discharge e.g. supply power? I don’t appear to understand the charging of these packs. Thank you.
Charging lithium is easy. You just connect a power supply positive to battery terminal positive and negative to battery terminal negative. If the voltage of the power supply is higher than the battery the energy will flow into the battery. When the voltages ends up matching the battery will start taking less and less power. This is when you are done charging.
So if you want to charge a 1 cell lithium you connect a 4.2v power supply. A 2 cell lithium battery would need an 8.4v power supply. Ect...
Make sure you are using an actual voltage controlled power supply because charging lithium over 4.2v per cell is how they explode. Because of this I set my charger power supply to 4.1v which only charges them 95% but is much safer and is easier on the battery.
Where did you find those cells for 1.09? Thanks
I have the same question.
Frank:
Where did you get the plastic project enclosure for your 12v unit (one for the heat blanket)?
Thanks,
Ed
KC2ORP
+Ed Watters, hey Ed, thanks for watching. The case is a Husky case I picked up from Home Depot for around $11.
Thanks....
So for a battery pack for a bluetooth speaker using an amp running 12-14v id use this configuration u just showed but increasing the number of batterys in the cells instead of cells if i want more playtime?
Correct, by adding more cells to each cell set you will increase the mAh's.
so id go with 4cells and 5 batterys in each cell to get around 14 volts and a good amount of mah with real 18650 batterys? Oh and what would be the best way to charge them?
What brand and model is your inverter. It might be able to handle those batteries fully charged as the ratings they give have given are an ideal range, also might be worth contacting the manufacturer to find out if there is an adjustment you can do to the buck/boost converter inside the unit to allow for that higher input of fully charged batteries. Another option is adding your own buck converter to step the voltage down, you can feed it a range of voltages and have a fixed output, then feed that to the inverter. Not sure if a single step down dc to dc (buck converter) as able to cover the amps from all battery banks, if not then each bank could have a buck converter. EDIT:: Ah I see you have a KRIËGER KR1500 inverter with 15.5volt over volt shutdown. It's worth looking in to the Buck converters.
KRIËGER KR1500 1500 Watt 12V Dual Power Inverter
Input Voltage Range 10 - 15.5 VDC
Over Voltage Shutdown Over 15.5 VDC
Under Voltage Shutdown Under 10 VDC
Low Voltage Alarm Audible at 10.6 VDC
www.kriegermfg.com/product/kr1500/
can you please tell me how to make a 12v 100ah battery pack for inverter ups. also tell me how to select bms and how to wire the bms.
Those are some of the topics I cover in my videos. Keep watching and you will get it... To build a 12v 107ah battery you will need 200 2100 mAh 18650 cells and you could build them in a couple configurations but in essance the battery would be a 50p4s.
excellent video. Thumbs up. I was worried about my battery pack being over volted with a 4S and under volted with a 3S. Can i just go with a 4S and put some kind of a voltage controller on it that only allows a certain amount of volts to come out?
Yes, you can use buck converters like these: www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_14?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=step+down+buck+converter&sprefix=step+down+buck%2Caps%2C213&crid=109681OKT5QQ3
You also need to know what the limits are of the device(s) you be using with your batteries. If it is a device you would normally use in a automobile you would be safe with voltages around 13.7 to 14.7 volts.
Thanks so much for the answer although my battery pack needs to be wired for 60 amps and so I assume i will need a buck converter that says 60 or more amps right? Also when wiring this together would I actually run the power through the buck converter or would I just connect the buck converter to the wires running from the battery to the motor being powered.? Thanks in advance for your time and any help you can give
+pandarama67 yes, you will need a converter that can handle more than 60 amps. I would also recommend a fuse or a breaker will prevent to many amps from flowing.
You will need to refer to wireing instructions that should come with your converter. I hope this helps
Frank
Yes it helps and I am subing to your channel and thanks so much. I hate to keep bothering you but I have one more related question. I found a buck converter that will do the 60 amps of current draw and the 12 volts output that I need but the input voltage is 24 V. If my lithium ion battery pack is 15.8 will it be ok to wire into the buck converter with this voltage since it is less then 24 V, or should I wire the battery closer to 24V like maybe a 7 series to make 24.9V before wiring into the buck converter?
@@pandarama67 I'm pretty sure it means it steps down from a Max of 24v, so anything lower then 24v going into the stepdown should be fine.
Its probably good for you to watch so TH-cam videos explaining them and how they work.
Cheers
I have 18650 from different brands, do you think I can parallel them, or I have to chose some of them
+Jose Garcia, I have cell packs made from different cell manufacturers, but I make sure and build my cell packs with cells that are close to the same size.
The best is 7S?P and use a 24v inverter.
I was thinking about 48v inverter. The higher the voltage the less the losses.
Frank, what a great video, You mentioned that you where only going to charge your pack to 90% 15.4v
How are you doing that? Does your BMS have an adjustable setting? If so what are you BMS are you using for the 4s5p?
You have to make your own charger using dc step-up or step-module with CV CV features.
Setting CV will limit the voltage to bms.
what program was that that u used the 2 u posted didnt look like that
the excel program or link thanks
+waldo2413 Google Sheets.
sheets.google.com
Why don't you do a 5s or a 6s? But see if you can find a step down converter that can carry the amps you want.
That would work if I didn't need a lot of amperage. Plus, it becomes a little more difficult when it comes to charging. One of the things I try to do is keep the costs down. When adding more electronics it costs more and it adds more fail points. Thank you for watching and commenting.
Good video. How are you branding your cells? Are you printing onto the cell itself?
I'm just using "Avery Clear Return Address Labels for Laser Printers 2/3" x 1-3/4", (15695) amzn.to/2G4EPdd. I print the cell details on the label, then I put the label on the cell and then I cover the cell with a clear cell wrap. I cover this in detail in this video: th-cam.com/video/Dwz8IzxVQWs/w-d-xo.html. Thanks for watching.
Ah I see! Thanks Frank. I haven't had time to go through all your vids, but I will do. I really like how meticulous you are!
Does kitty have a heat blanket? It looks pretty content. :-)
I also have a Mac
which Spreadsheet Format Do I Use?
Use the one that works best for you. Even though I have MS Office on my computers, I prefer to use Google Docs.
Lovi`n the cat interest in the subject....
Just Subbed Great Video & Videos
Thanks for watching! Frank
Why wouldn't you just buy batteries that are the same mah?
90% is the new 100 % XD
You already lost me with the numbers when you were placing them!
Thank you.. Why does every other video sound like the man's died and lost his soul... Mind dumbing..