DIY "Cartomizer" USB Charging Cable

[h8isgr8]

Hey fellow modders, this is officially my first e-cig mod. I'm a very frugal person (ok, I'm cheap), and like to build things in the attempt to save money.

I'm interested in switching to catomizers, which means buying new batteries. I plan on buying a pack of 5 DPV9 batteries from eastmall, and I don't feel like spending ~$7 for each USB battery charging adapter I need.

First, I purchased a cartomizer from a forum member (member was nice enough to send me two) to see if I even liked how they work. I rigged one up to a battery and did some vaping. I'll just say I liked it and won't go into details.

Anyway, after taking the cartomizer for a test drive and getting quite a buzz, I gutted it and put together a USB battery charging cable. It was fairly straight forward, and only took about 10 minutes.

Don't throw those used cartomizers away; make yourself some backup charging cables!

Hope you like it!

 

[curiouskyle16]

umm... im a newb. but care to give more details?

 

[BOREMAN]

Hey fellow modders, this is officially my first e-cig mod. I'm a very frugal person (ok, I'm cheap), and like to build things in the attempt to save money.

I'm interested in switching to catomizers, which means buying new batteries. I plan on buying a pack of 5 DPV9 batteries from eastmall, and I don't feel like spending ~$7 for each USB battery charging adapter I need.

First, I purchased a cartomizer from a forum member (member was nice enough to send me two) to see if I even liked how they work. I rigged one up to a battery and did some vaping. I'll just say I liked it and won't go into details.

Anyway, after taking the cartomizer for a test drive and getting quite a buzz, I gutted it and put together a USB battery charging cable. It was fairly straight forward, and only took about 10 minutes.

Don't throw those used cartomizers away; make yourself some backup charging cables!

Hope you like it!

Would have been just as easy (and inexpensive) to buy a Vapor King USB Passthru (white and also now in Blue) for 20.00. Not sure, but your cartomizer looks like a four hole cartomizer from either GreenCig or Vapor4Life, home of the Vapor King (both interchangeable). Anyway, that is pretty cool, good job, interesting. I use the Vapor King and the love the cartomizer concept. You can get one heck of a starter kit at Vapor4Life.com for $72.00. Comes with alot of xtras, including a usb passthru and a PCC, carry case, carts, juice, etc. Puts out tremendous amount of vapor and kick .... throat hit. Good job.

Mike
www.vapor4life.com

 

[BOREMAN]

Also the cartomizers are refillable (several times over). Can also clean them out by popping off the white end piece and running under the kitchen faucet (see my post "refurbing your cartomizers") in the vapor4life thread forum. Havent thrown one away yet! ! ! I'm a frugal SOB myself, LOL ! ! !

 

[firhill]

Would have been just as easy (and inexpensive) to buy a Vapor King USB Passthru (white and also now in Blue) for 20.00.

It's not a passthru..it's a battery charger.

That cartomizer in pic is from mist-stix.

 

[mnealtx]

Best hope there's a protection IC in the battery, then... because there's certainly nothing in the atomizer shell to prevent overcharging.

 

[h8isgr8]

Best hope there's a protection IC in the battery, then... because there's certainly nothing in the atomizer shell to prevent overcharging.

As far as I know, there isn't anything of that sort in any e-cig charging cable or "charger" (which are not chargers at all, just 5V power supplies).

The IC inside each battery takes care of the charging and all the other functions of the e-cig like puff timeout, under-voltage protection, etc.

Cartomizers don't last forever, they eventually burn out just like regular atomizers, so there will always be dead ones to make charger adapters out of. You could also slap one on the end of an old cell phone charger.

I found a Chinese wholesaler who I will be buying batteries and cartomizers from. The cartomizers are $0.70 each and the batteries are $5.50 each. Shipping is a bit of a killer at $40, but I plan to place a large order and make it worth it.

Firhill, hope you don't mind me re-purposing a perfectly good cartomizer. If it makes a difference, I vaped the h**l out of it before the mod.

 

[h8isgr8]

I just received my first KR808D-1 style battery. It charges perfectly on my "carto-charger".

 

[warp1900]

How about sharing the Chinese website?



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[h8isgr8]

How about sharing the Chinese website?

I just hit up various wholesalers on Alibaba until I found one I liked. This is the company I quoted the prices for.......

Hongkong Broadmind Intl.Industrial Co.,Ltd

Also, I think I might have spoke too soon on this battery charging issue. It looks like this battery I got from mist-stix (KR808D-1 style) doesn't have any charging function built in, only puff timeout and low-voltage/short-circuit protection. I checked the voltage after letting it charge for a couple hours and the voltage was at 4.38V (too high).

I'm almost tempted to let it charge longer and see what happens, but I just got the thing and would hate to destroy it already. If worst comes to worst, I will have to install a MAX1555 inside my little cartomizer charging cable.

The super mini e-cig batteries that I have been using have built-in charging and will stop charging at 4.2V.

 

[h8isgr8]

OK, I made a very small PCB with a MAX1555 single cell charger IC. I fitted this to my "carto-charger" and it's now working like it should. The battery charges properly to 4.2V now.

This makes this mod pointless for the average modder, as I doubt too many would bother doing this as apposed to spending ~$8 on a USB charger. For me it's still worth it, as I already have the components and tools to do this. Since I need quite a few of these, I will be saving a good deal of money.

The nice thing about the MAX1555, is you can set it up for ~280mA of charge current. This should charge a completely dead battery in just a little over an hour.

 

[kender]

Nice work. Thats some small soldering there

 

[h8isgr8]

Thanks, "small soldering" is what I do best.

It's usually audio related though.......

http://i41.tinypic.com/2a5ygpd.jpg
http://i40.tinypic.com/2q8dge0.jpg
http://i26.tinypic.com/2s81bmb.jpg
http://i29.tinypic.com/20kazox.jpg

 

[kinabaloo]

Nice board h8

I've been meaning to check up on something; here's a good a point as any: any conclusions reached on whether standard e-cig batteries are in fact Li-po r.t. Li-ion?

 

[h8isgr8]

I've been meaning to check up on something; here's a good a point as any: any conclusions reached on whether standard e-cig batteries are in fact Li-po r.t. Li-ion?

Good question. I'm tempted to say Li-po, but I have no real evidence for that.

I'm pretty much charging this battery at 1C, so I hope it is Li-po. 8-o

 

[warp1900]

I have 6 opened factory batteries that I used to extract the connectors form, 2 of them have Li-ion printed on them with numbers and the other 4 have only the numbers.


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[h8isgr8]

Thanks for the input warp.

Maybe charging at 1C isn't the best thing for these batteries; but the again, neither is discharging at ~5C.

I think I might make a new PCB set for 100mA charge and also include the charging status LED output this time.

 

[Blackross]

DUDE, i was just thinking the same thing on the maxim chippy, and google brought me here.... wow. the internet is getting smaller.

and that answers the question on "will it charge my kr8's?"

 

[Blackross]

BTW, its not a pointless mod.... its just a stepping stone to another greater MOD! think you'll probably hit the same conclusion i did.