Monday, March 21, 2016

Bench Testing Batteries

Today I picked up from work a set of batteries from our Portable Xray machine. It had its batteries replaced and the boss let me take the old ones home. They are sealed lead acid but small format cells stacked to give 96 volts per block or a total of 192 volts in series. They are made with pure lead and of medical quality. They are not large yet they will give me the ability to do bench testing for charging and for driving my AC motor on the bench with a load and a good amount of power. The only down side is that they are of low AH rating. Meant to be charged and discharged multiple times daily. But for the bench they will be perfect. Power and light weight. I can do some charge testing with my Synkromotive and set up the AC wall charging setup and see how well they will charge up using a demo board on the bench and be able to do a talk and video of the setup and process. I can also use the AC forklift motor/inverter setup to test under high power and under load on the bench and I can also test the charging ability of the AC motor.


I have the batteries on the charger right now since I have a lead acid charger that will do 96 volts. One pack was 101 volts and the other was at 98 volts. They won't give me full AH rating but they will do for what I need. AH rating is 2.5Ah. Not much, but enough for my testing needs.

Pete :)


Sold 3 Synkromotive Controllers and I will have two left to sell. Then all the current stock will be in the hands of the people who like them. Im working to see if there is a possibility to revive Synkromotive and keep the controller from going away completely. Its a great little powerhouse controller and will be sorely missed if it goes away. It is a unique controller in that its not a overly bloated version of a golf cart controller. Its not large, nor heavy and is just a dream to use.

Anyway, back to the batteries. These will be a boon for me but they would not be good to buy a bunch of them to use for your vehicle. They are lead. Heavy if you need lots of AH's for your beastie. New they are $849 bucks discounted. Ouch. For me, Free. No leaking.

Product ID:MED0012
Milliamp Hours:2.5Ah
Voltage:192
Termination:Plug
Chemistry:Pure Sealed Lead Acid
Weight (lbs):45
Width (in):4.5000
Length (in):14.00
Height (in):11.20





Thursday, March 3, 2016

AC-35

Not sure how many know that I was able to purchase an AC-35 last year with all the goodies that go with it. It was from a guy that was going to build an EV but abandoned the project. I think I figured out why. I had purchased a motor adapter from ThunderStruck Motors for the AC-35 and up motors and those that might be using the Warp9 and similar with the same bolt pattern. Comes to find out that the face plate of the motor is not a B-Face plate. It is a flat C-Face style used in industrial carts and mining equipment. But not for use with the modern adapters for mounting to your car. I talked with them yesterday and they are going to put on the proper end plates and change the encoder for use in an automobile for a very reasonable price. Still leaves me at a much lower cost than if I had purchased this brand new. They are also going to upgrade the 120 volt controller to the most current software if needed. That is a bit more expensive than I had hoped but it will again be much cheaper overall for this package than buying new by a long shot. I do know the motor runs because I connected it to my DIY inverter. However I was unable to utilize the encoder. Im guessing it is not compatible with the inverters requirements or its just not working. Which it could be. I think the guy I got it from purchased it used as well. But anyway this VW Bus project is now moving forward once again.

Today I am going to setup my Synkromotive Controller Demo Board so I can charge a bank of batteries utilizing my DC old transformer style DC Battery Charger. It is a step-down transformer from 120 volts to 24 volts. I won't be charging at a high rate but it will serve the purpose of showing the charging abilities of the controller utilizing any DC source. So far I have used a large 48 volt bank of batteries and my old 240 DC welding machine to charge my batteries. Im doing this for a few folks who wish to utilize the Synkromotive as a charger. Once I have my beastie back I will be setting that up to charge my pack from wall AC then doing another video for that.

My DIY inverter project will continue and I will be trying to setup a way to connect the motor and Diesel engine together via belt drive to make this work. It really is just a matter of connecting the two and giving it a go. I was going to connect a DC motor to the AC motor and do a test that way. Might be an easier task. Maybe. I guess I'll need to bust out the welder and hack saw and weld up some brackets.


As you can see the face plate is flat and doesn't have the 4" step for centering an adapter plate and the bolt holes are too large and not far enough out to the edge. The B-Face end plate will be my ticket.



The motor tag clearly states that this is a true AC-35 motor and not one of those old AC-30 motors being touted as an AC-36 motor.



In my searching for some new old stock of Synkromotive controllers I had found someones build. It was a build of a 240Z and he used what looks to be a Warp9 motor and the Synkromotive Controller. It is a very clean build and I love the way this guy took his time in making the wiring look very very clean and tidy. This level of care is what we should all aspire to do for our own conversions.