Quick 'n Dirty "Need battery NOW" mod

[jameth]

Of course. Anything between the batteries/power source and the atty adds resistance and obviously affects final loaded volts. There is no free lunch. Atty connector tests are the most accurate.

In the Puck thread there were numerous posts of folks with low loaded volts with Joye atties (~3.6V).

Ran a couple tests.

Here's a freshly charged naked pack (5.5V unloaded) with a 2.5Ω load.

Again at 2Ω.

NiMH's just can't handle the discharge needed for lower ohms, hence the drastic voltage drop under load.

That all makes good sense.

I do a lot of radio controlled hobby stuff, and have done pretty extensive tests with many types of battery chemistry's (LiPo, A123, NIMH etc.) and certainly know all about NIMH's inability to dump a lot of amps at once under load. Their internal resistance is just to high!

An interesting note on that subject, for a while I was making custom NIMH battery packs for a 1/16 scale RC truck, I tested three different brands that can be bought in stores locally around me, and found that the duracell 2650 mah batteries absolutely blow away the Energizers equivalents, they literally don't even come close.

The RC truck in question pretty easily puts these NIMH's under their maximum discharge rate, and the difference was IMMEDIATELY noticeable upon loading up a pack and driving the truck, the duracells preformed fantastic, the energizers produced much less power initially, as well as throughout its discharge.

The other battery was called "Nuon", sold by a local "Batteries +" shop, it performed about equal to the duracells, at twice the cost.

Anyhow, these were all tested with new batteries bought at the store, and I even tested 3 different sets of Energizers because I just couldn't believe how bad they performed, sure enough they all sucked.

I threw away all the energizers, they were consistently crappy!

This was all about a year ago, and I recently picked up some more energizers just to test and see if they have changed, nope, they still do not perform well under high current demand applications.

Not all NIMH's are created equal!

Anyhow, I only buy duracell NIMH any more, and they all work great in high power applications.

My .02 cents!

 

[jameth]

Awesome work! Keep us posted on the 'beautifications' I picked up some of the same type of batt boxes in the AAA size a while ago and never did anything with them; will have to do something with them soon

Well I did a little "beautifying" of it, while still keeping the industrial feel.

Certainly won't win any art contests, but I just wanted to quickly get something on there to keep the wires/terminals protected and safe.

I used some silver "Sculpey", which is a polymer based clay that you can bake in your oven.

This was more of an experiment in attaching sculpey to an ABS plastic (battery box) and bake it without melting the ABS. The recommended temperature to bake Sculpey is just a bit higher then the melting point of ABS, so I cooked it at a lower temp (a bit to low) for longer time, and while it certainly hardened, it is a little weak structurally, so I need to do a bit more experimenting with the temp, which will give me an excuse to re-do it and make it a bit less of a rush job.

 

[TomCatt]

Cool! And thanks for the info on the NiMH brand differences. I have one set of Duracells, 2 sets of CVS store brands, and a set of Tenergy AAA NiMH for my Puck box mods. I haven't paid much attention to performance between them; but the store brands seem to give comparable performance to the name brands.

 

[jameth]

Cool! And thanks for the info on the NiMH brand differences. I have one set of Duracells, 2 sets of CVS store brands, and a set of Tenergy AAA NiMH for my Puck box mods. I haven't paid much attention to performance between them; but the store brands seem to give comparable performance to the name brands.

I don't know about the Tenergy NIMH AAA's, but I once bought a handful of Tenergy brand 110 MAH LiPo's for a micro RC airplane, and they were quite possibly the worst LiPo's I have ever bought!

If I remember correctly I bought a pack of 5 of them, on delivery 2 of them were obviously no good, charge em up, pop them in the airplane, and it almost immediately goes into low power cut off upon lift off.

The other 3 in the pack worked ok for about 5 charge/discharge cycles, and then were equally as crappy.

I guess around here Tenergy is a "name brand" battery, but in the RC hobby community they are pretty much accepted as the cheapest crappy china batteries around, and are usually avoided like the plague!

Infact in many RC hobby forums, there are battery testing threads, and Tenergy batteries almost always prove to be way way over rated on MAH. (500 MAH rated ends up being 250 ish when tested on high end charger)

 

[GERGOZ]

hey jameth

ahhhh, a man after my own heart, lol

love your mod, great minds must think alike

ok ok, i take it back, lol

i made one similar not long ago and LOVE IT

just made another one, a little different with voltage indicator, not quite finished

in process of moving, so, modding on back-burner

i will try to paste link, if it dont work, you should check it out under my posts
i only have, like 4, lol

anywho, nice work there my new nimh brother !

hey TomCatt !!!! wheres his t-shirt, lmao
i know you remember !

gervis

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/modders-forum/190091-my-first-mod-thanks-thepuck.html

 

[jameth]

hey jameth

ahhhh, a man after my own heart, lol

love your mod, great minds must think alike

ok ok, i take it back, lol

i made one similar not long ago and LOVE IT

just made another one, a little different with voltage indicator, not quite finished

in process of moving, so, modding on back-burner

i will try to paste link, if it dont work, you should check it out under my posts
i only have, like 4, lol

anywho, nice work there my new nimh brother !

hey TomCatt !!!! wheres his t-shirt, lmao
i know you remember !

gervis

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/modders-forum/190091-my-first-mod-thanks-thepuck.html

Wow man that looks really nice! Certainly more refined then mine

To much fun playing with this stuff, almost makes you just want to go blow $50 on random bits and pieces and play around with ideas...

To mod, or to save, that is the question....

 

[TomCatt]

......

hey TomCatt !!!! wheres his t-shirt, lmao
i know you remember !

gervis

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/modders-forum/190091-my-first-mod-thanks-thepuck.html

Hey Gervis, I pulled out a pack of Avery t-shirt transfer sheets from the file cabinet last week. I figure at the rate I usually get things done; should have a shirt made in 3 or 4 weeks LOL!!!

 

[GERGOZ]

thank you sir

i wouldnt say refined, lol
maybe just "hidden" with foam tape, lol

oooooh yeah, i havent had this much fun and concentration in YEARS, sad to say, lol
i had to go to hobby lobby and buy me a magnifying hat, yep, i have gone hard-core

i just noticed, i lol a lot, dont i ?
i really do that, its good for ya !

keep it up, there aint too many of us "nimh boys" around, we need all the help we can get, lmao

gervis

 

[GERGOZ]

Hey Gervis, I pulled out a pack of Avery t-shirt transfer sheets from the file cabinet last week. I figure at the rate I usually get things done; should have a shirt made in 3 or 4 weeks LOL!!!

maaaaaaaaan !

i actually just BURST out laughing !

you know, its too bad we dont live closer to each other
i think we might could be bestest buds !

gervis

 

[Stosh]

........keep it up, there aint too many of us "nimh boys" around, we need all the help we can get, lmao

gervis

Take a look at the number of posts in the Puck threads, there's more of us vaping "on the dark side"
than ya think!!

Proud owner of 3 pucks (2AA, 1 AAA) and 5V nimh batteries in my maxi roughstack right now.....

 

[jameth]

when i've thought of a "skin" for this type of mod I always think of textured leather (worked with tools, and just snapped on), but that would completely change the look here.

That sounds like a fantastic idea, relatively easy to implement on something like this as well, which is of course the biggest hurdle when thinking of a way to encase something like this.

Leather wrapped around, with small buttons to hold it in place, would make a nice look, and be easy to remove for battery re-charge, genius!

Not that I have ever worked with or have had chunks of leather laying around...

May have to change that!


Hell could even have a small leather pouch with a hole for the button to protrude from and a draw string at the top...

hmmmm

 

[mrjaguar]

nice insta-mod, BUT.. aren't those un-protected batteries? I wouldn't use them unless absolutely necessary, but I've got a backup and a passthrough.. I'd rather have the wife upset I bought ANOTHER pv than have an analog.

After dropping my 1000mah ego pass-through one to many times, it finally stopped working the other day...

With money a little tight at the moment, and ultimately wanting a bottom feeder or a VV mod of some sort, I decided to really quickly throw something together to get me by until I have some extra money to spend for something new.

I was originally going to make a "PUCK" mod, but decided to use AA's instead of AAA's, mostly because I have a stack of NIMH AA's already, and didn't feel like buying some AAA NIMH's.

At the same time, I didn't want a massive 4AA x 2AA box device either.



So with minimal spending in mind, went to radio shack, picked up a square 4 AA battery box, and went home to see what I could cobble together.

I already had some switches, lots of rechargeable AA's, and harvested the EGO connector from my dead battery, so it was pretty much just a $3 battery box from radio shack for me to get this going.

So after some soldering, some hot gluing, and a quick 15 min fast charge of the batteries, I had a working, higher voltage battery pack for my ego-t/510 gear.

Works fantastic, the higher voltage really makes a difference, much better vapor production. When they come fresh of the charger its a little over 5V, which is a bit much for the ego-t attys, but it pretty quickly settles in around 4.3-4.5V under load, which is perfect I think.

I charged these up on thursday night, and here I am monday afternoon, on the same charge, still going strong, 2600 MAH Duracells FTW!

Anyways, nothing new or innovative here, just a quick and dirty power source when times are tight, but man after using the higher voltage, I don't think I want to go back to the EGO's 3.2v PWM power source!

Of course now I'm thinking of ways to make it a little more pretty, and less industrial looking

View attachment 43078 View attachment 43077

 

[TomCatt]

nice insta-mod, BUT.. aren't those un-protected batteries? I wouldn't use them unless absolutely necessary, but I've got a backup and a passthrough.. I'd rather have the wife upset I bought ANOTHER pv than have an analog.

These are NiMH batts; they do not require protection and are much safer than li-ion batts. These are the rechargeable batteries available in many stores for use in 'everyday' electric/electronic battery powered items.

 

[jameth]

These are NiMH batts; they do not require protection and are much safer than li-ion batts. These are the rechargeable batteries available in many stores for use in 'everyday' electric/electronic battery powered items.

Absolutely correct.

 

[GERGOZ]

Take a look at the number of posts in the Puck threads, there's more of us vaping "on the dark side"
than ya think!!

Proud owner of 3 pucks (2AA, 1 AAA) and 5V nimh batteries in my maxi roughstack right now.....

but i like to think of us as the underdogs, lol

btw, did you notice darth vader showed up on page 1, lmao

dont be afraid, jameth, we all end up being related, somehow, in the end.......right ?
crap, i cant remember

hey mr WillyB, only pickin, nothin but respect for ya
you have probably forgotten more about electronics than i will ever know
you have forgotten...somethin.....maybe ?

gervis

 

[CraigHB]

Actually, with a standard resistance or above atomizer (>3Ω) and 4 AA size cells, you can keep the voltage sag tolerable. In that case, NiMH is a good solution. Much safer battery plus they actually hold quite a bit of energy, not quite as much as a Li-Ion, but certainly enough to make them practical.

I was looking at these newer NiZn batts that were mentioned. They look promising. Energy density equal to Li-Ion, good cycle life, good high drain characteristics, less expensive, same safety as NiMH. Sounds like the perfect battery. May have to look into building a mod with these. Looks like one company makes them and holds a patent, PowerGenix.

 

[jameth]

Actually, with a standard resistance or above atomizer (>3Ω) and 4 AA size cells, you can keep the voltage sag tolerable. In that case, NiMH is a good solution. Much safer battery plus they actually hold quite a bit of energy, not quite as much as a Li-Ion, but certainly enough to make them practical.
.

This has been my experience.