New drill

[Paul53]

Keyboard made an error.

 

 

BAN KEYBOARDS!

Edited July 4, 2021 by Paul53

[Historian]

On 7/1/2021 at 8:25 AM, Huaco Kid said:

I'm still using a 20 year old Craftsman.

I don't have a battery powered anything.

I have one about the same age.  That drill has one speed...insanity.   And it freakin works. 

Thing is a tank.

[MO Fugga]

3 hours ago, Paul53 said:

Beautiful lifetime worth of tools. Is there an upgrade to trade the leaf blower for a wood chipper? It could be very useful at work.

You're in DC?

[Paul53]

On 7/2/2021 at 10:55 PM, MO Fugga said:

You're in DC?

Have chipper will travel. (Maine)

[holyjohnson]

On 7/2/2021 at 6:04 AM, Huaco Kid said:

"Elk don't know how many legs a horse has!"

"Watch your Top Knot"

[Fog]

We have DeWalt, Makita, Milwaukee, and a few others.

I got the battery adapters, couple of them are clearly 3D printed in a guys garage, but they work. It allows all the tools to take Dewalt batteries. I don't think they are the best, but I'm not going to spend thousands on batteries for every brand.

Take the caulking guns, my guys don't like the Dewalt, it doesn't control the bead as well, so they get Makita.

Milwaukee has a 1" impact driver that the mechanic likes so he has at least one.

Makita makes a battery powered collated screwgun that will drive 3" screws into wood decking, so we have several of those.

Other than a few Makita batteries it all runs on the DeWalt stuff.

 

Sold all the Fein and Hilti ****, it costs far too much for what it is and the batteries were junk and expensive.

Have a couple Metabo corded grinders in the metal shop, I do like those. But then the corded stuff in the shop is a whole 'nother ball o' wax. 

 

Heck, we run our 12v stuff off DeWalt batteries. I got the power output adapters, 3D printed in FL, get them on ebay, then a small stepdown power supply if voltage is critical. On most of the stuff it isn't, the 12v pumps all run fine on the 18v nominal output from the DeWalt batteries.

[Eric]

5 hours ago, Fog said:

We have DeWalt, Makita, Milwaukee, and a few others.

I got the battery adapters, couple of them are clearly 3D printed in a guys garage, but they work. It allows all the tools to take Dewalt batteries. I don't think they are the best, but I'm not going to spend thousands on batteries for every brand.

Take the caulking guns, my guys don't like the Dewalt, it doesn't control the bead as well, so they get Makita.

Milwaukee has a 1" impact driver that the mechanic likes so he has at least one.

Makita makes a battery powered collated screwgun that will drive 3" screws into wood decking, so we have several of those.

Other than a few Makita batteries it all runs on the DeWalt stuff.

 

Sold all the Fein and Hilti ****, it costs far too much for what it is and the batteries were junk and expensive.

Have a couple Metabo corded grinders in the metal shop, I do like those. But then the corded stuff in the shop is a whole 'nother ball o' wax. 

 

Heck, we run our 12v stuff off DeWalt batteries. I got the power output adapters, 3D printed in FL, get them on ebay, then a small stepdown power supply if voltage is critical. On most of the stuff it isn't, the 12v pumps all run fine on the 18v nominal output from the DeWalt batteries.

I used to have a buddy with a mid-sixties VW bus. It was a 6-volt electrical system and that was one cold-blooded SOB, in the morning. It would crank super slow and the battery would run down quickly. An old farmer told him to stick a 9-volt tractor battery in it. He tried it and that bus would spin over like a 12-volt. The extra 3 volts weren’t enough to harm anything, so no other changes needed to be made. I don’t remember if he changed the voltage regulator, or not. Seems like he would have had to, but I don’t remember.  Anyway, it was a pretty slick fix to a really annoying problem. 

[Fog]

17 minutes ago, Eric said:

I used to have a buddy with a mid-sixties VW bus. It was a 6-volt electrical system and that was one cold-blooded SOB, in the morning. It would crank super slow and the battery would run down quickly. An old farmer told him to stick a 9-volt tractor battery in it. He tried it and that bus would spin over like a 12-volt. The extra 3 volts weren’t enough to harm anything, so no other changes needed to be made. I don’t remember if he changed the voltage regulator, or not. Seems like he would have had to, but I don’t remember.  Anyway, it was a pretty slick fix to a really annoying problem. 

I've changed tractors from 6v to 12v, swap out the alternator and coil, if it had lights I'd swap out the bulbs.

I guess a 6v system beat cranking by hand, but not much else.

[Swampfox762]

On 7/1/2021 at 8:25 AM, Huaco Kid said:

I'm still using a 20 year old Craftsman.

I don't have a battery powered anything.

Me neither.  I use to.  But, every damn time I needed it, it was dead.  I gave up about 15 years ago.  Just bought a good drill and saw, and a Hundred ft. extension cord...

[crockett]

3 hours ago, Eric said:

I used to have a buddy with a mid-sixties VW bus. It was a 6-volt electrical system and that was one cold-blooded SOB, in the morning. It would crank super slow and the battery would run down quickly. An old farmer told him to stick a 9-volt tractor battery in it. He tried it and that bus would spin over like a 12-volt. The extra 3 volts weren’t enough to harm anything, so no other changes needed to be made. I don’t remember if he changed the voltage regulator, or not. Seems like he would have had to, but I don’t remember.  Anyway, it was a pretty slick fix to a really annoying problem. 

 

Had the same issue with my very first VW Polo, back in the early 90s. While it was on a 12 volt system, everything was so corroded and old, that the alternator barely cranked.

At that point I was working in aviation, but I was pretty broke. Battery cells in aviation need to be balanced on a strict maintenance schedule. When a cell didn't meet the charge / discharge requirements measured in amps, it was replaced with one that was in spec.

Aviation regulations are very strict and needless to say, those cells removed from the pack are still pretty strong. So I took some old cells home and built my own battery pack for my Polo.

The nominal voltage of one Nickel Cadmium battery cell is 1.2 volts, so 10 cells would provide 12 volt, but I added 2 more cells for a voltage of 14.4.

That alternator had no excuse anymore, even with all the resistances in the system.

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by crockett

[Eric]

2 minutes ago, crockett said:

 

Had the same issue with my very first VW Polo, back in the early 90s. While it was on a 12 volt system, everything was so corroded and old, that the alternator barely cranked.

At that point I was working in aviation, but pretty broke. Batteries cells in aviation need to be balanced on a strict maintenance schedule. When a cell didn't meet the charge / discharge requirements measured in amps, it was replaced with one that was in spec.

Aviation regulations are very strict and needless to say, those cells removed from the pack are still pretty strong. So I took some old cells home and build my own battery pack for my Polo.

The nominal voltage of one Nickel Cadmium battery cell is 1.2 volts, so 10 cells would provide 12 volt, but I added 2 more cells for a voltage of 14.4.

That alternator had no excuse anymore, even with all the resistances in the system.

 

I bet that would have been one expensive VW battery pack, if you bought it retail. 

[gwalchmai]

14 minutes ago, Swampfox762 said:

Me neither.  I use to.  But, every damn time I needed it, it was dead.  I gave up about 15 years ago.  Just bought a good drill and saw, and a Hundred ft. extension cord...

Corded tools are king when you can get them to the work, but cordless ones are very convenient and are getting better all the time. I'm looking forward to solar cells and windmills being mounted on them for the ultimate experience.

[Eric]

9 minutes ago, gwalchmai said:

Corded tools are king when you can get them to the work, but cordless ones are very convenient and are getting better all the time. I'm looking forward to solar cells and windmills being mounted on them for the ultimate experience.

I’m working on cordless tools that are powered by your life force. They’ll last you the rest of your life. 

[janice6]

1 hour ago, Eric said:

I used to have a buddy with a mid-sixties VW bus. It was a 6-volt electrical system and that was one cold-blooded SOB, in the morning. It would crank super slow and the battery would run down quickly. An old farmer told him to stick a 9-volt tractor battery in it. He tried it and that bus would spin over like a 12-volt. The extra 3 volts weren’t enough to harm anything, so no other changes needed to be made. I don’t remember if he changed the voltage regulator, or not. Seems like he would have had to, but I don’t remember.  Anyway, it was a pretty slick fix to a really annoying problem. 

I never knew about the 9Volt batteries.  But in the early 50's all our cars were 6 Volt and a bitch to start in the middle of MN winters.  So the most enterprising would simply switch to 12 volt batteries and generators/regulators.  Starting was better than just replacing starter motors back then.  Perhaps the spark was a little hotter also...........

 

[janice6]

3 minutes ago, Eric said:

I’m working on cordless tools that are powered by your life force. They’ll last you the rest of your life. 

So two months it is!

[crockett]

31 minutes ago, Eric said:

I bet that would have been one expensive VW battery pack, if you bought it retail. 

 

Most likely. I don't recall the prices on those cells, but I do recall a coworker that dinged a titanium rotor head while letting it down on a work bench. Not reparable by aviation standards. That thing was 150k Deutsch Marks. 1 Deutsch Mark was around 3 USD at that time. It was the head of a S76. Needed to be imported from the US. You do the math.

 

When I built my house battery for my minivan camper conversion a couple months ago, that brought back some memories. Got to work with individual cells again.

These are LifePo4 cells, they hold sooooo much more energy compared to lead acid and nickel cadmium cells. They are also much more complicated to balance. They require a battery management module (hangs in-front of the pack) which checks and balances every single cells, at all times. If just one cell would be off slightly in voltage, the entire pack can go bonkers.

The 4 cells make up about 13.6volts when fully charged at around 98%. They have the same size and weight as a regular midsize lead acid car battery, but they hold 6 times the usable energy. The max discharge amperage, when you would short it, is so high, it will not weld metal together, it will melt it.

The cells need to be compressed in a pack, or they will bulge when being charged / discharged at high rate.

I was never a fan of rechargeable batteries, but the discharge voltage of these LifePo4 cells is so linear, its a total game changer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by crockett

[gwalchmai]

15 minutes ago, janice6 said:

So two months it is!

I can be rebuilt with new cells. Better than I was before. Better...stronger...faster.

[Eric]

5 minutes ago, crockett said:

 

Most likely. I don't recall the prices on those cells, but I do recall a coworker that dinged a titanium rotor head while letting it down on a work bench. Not reparable by aviation standards. That thing was 150k Deutsch Marks. 1 Deutsch Mark was around 3 USD at that time. It was the head of a S76. Needed to be imported from the US. You do the math.

 

When I built my house battery for my minivan camper conversion a couple months ago, that brought back some memories. Got to work with individual cells again.

These are LifePo4 cells, they hold sooooo much more energy compared to lead acid and nickel cadmium cells. They are also much more complicated to balance. They require a battery management module (hangs in-front of the pack) which checks and balances every single cells, at all times. If just one cell would be off slightly in voltage, the entire pack can go bonkers.

The 4 cells on the right of the photo make up about 13.6volts when fully charged at around 98%. They have the same size and weight as a regular midsize lead acid car battery, but they hold 6 times the usable energy. The max discharge amperage, when you would short it, is so high, it will not weld metal together, it will melt it.

The cells need to be compressed in a pack, or they will bulge when being charged / discharged at high rate.

I was never a fan of rechargeable batteries, but the discharge voltage of these LifePo4 cells is so linear, its a total game changer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a lot of technology today that is at a plateau, waiting for a serious jump in battery power density. Lithium Polymer batteries are amazing, but when the next big thing hits, I think that some truly amazing things will happen. I remember when really powerful rare Earth magnets started the miniaturization stampede. 
 

You did a great job laying out that battery compartment. Very clean. 

[janice6]

10 minutes ago, gwalchmai said:

I can be rebuilt with new cells. Better than I was before. Better...stronger...faster.

Ray Price "I Wish I Was 18 Again" - YouTube

[crockett]

1 hour ago, Eric said:

There is a lot of technology today that is at a plateau, waiting for a serious jump in battery power density. Lithium Polymer batteries are amazing, but when the next big thing hits, I think that some truly amazing things will happen. I remember when really powerful rare Earth magnets started the miniaturization stampede. 
 

You did a great job laying out that battery compartment. Very clean. 

I wonder what they want to try next. There are only so many elements. Maybe solid state systems...

Those rare earth magnets really hurt. Pinched my fingers a few times playing around with a couple rather small ones.

I was about to start over with that battery / charger / BMS / inverter setup, just so the cables would be nicely aligned, but I better keep going or I will be dicking around with this van build for the next 5 years. The idea was to get out more. Perfectionism is a real love / hate relationship.

[crockett]

I need one of those hydrogen fuel cells. Don't ask.

 

 

 

[railfancwb]

Think tiny powerful rare earth magnets come with a warning about letting young children play with them. Swallow two or three, they clamp intestines inappropriately, surgery required. 

Edited July 6, 2021 by railfancwb
Typo

[Eric]

6 hours ago, crockett said:

I wonder what they want to try next. There are only so many elements. Maybe solid state systems...

Those rare earth magnets really hurt. Pinched my fingers a few times playing around with a couple rather small ones.

I was about to start over with that battery / charger / BMS / inverter setup, just so the cables would be nicely aligned, but I better keep going or I will be dicking around with this van build for the next 5 years. The idea was to get out more. Perfectionism is a real love / hate relationship.

Yeah, I've gotten a few blood blisters playing with rare Earth magnets. I've played with some others that I thought I might be able to separate if I tried hard enough, but I was afraid to try. Those damn things bite.

[crockett]

2 minutes ago, Eric said:

Yeah, I've gotten a few blood blisters playing with rare Earth magnets. I've played with some others that I thought I might be able to separate if I tried hard enough, but I was afraid to try. Those damn things bite.

Btw, they are great for finding studs in the walls, well the nails.

[LostinTexas]

8 hours ago, crockett said:

 

Most likely. I don't recall the prices on those cells, but I do recall a coworker that dinged a titanium rotor head while letting it down on a work bench. Not reparable by aviation standards. That thing was 150k Deutsch Marks. 1 Deutsch Mark was around 3 USD at that time. It was the head of a S76. Needed to be imported from the US. You do the math.

 

When I built my house battery for my minivan camper conversion a couple months ago, that brought back some memories. Got to work with individual cells again.

These are LifePo4 cells, they hold sooooo much more energy compared to lead acid and nickel cadmium cells. They are also much more complicated to balance. They require a battery management module (hangs in-front of the pack) which checks and balances every single cells, at all times. If just one cell would be off slightly in voltage, the entire pack can go bonkers.

The 4 cells make up about 13.6volts when fully charged at around 98%. They have the same size and weight as a regular midsize lead acid car battery, but they hold 6 times the usable energy. The max discharge amperage, when you would short it, is so high, it will not weld metal together, it will melt it.

The cells need to be compressed in a pack, or they will bulge when being charged / discharged at high rate.

I was never a fan of rechargeable batteries, but the discharge voltage of these LifePo4 cells is so linear, its a total game changer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you want to glow in the dark? Because that is how you glow in the dark, and I'm pretty sure how Spiderman got started. ?