The making of the BLF UC4 charger: the start of a new venture, INTEREST LIST, UPDATE 7 (Well, ramping stopped :/ )

No worries Mooch.

I’ll be starting serious discussion with manufacturers about manufacturing and the other stuff Monday.

Say, what made you come up in this forum?

Been a lurker at BLF for far too long!

My apologies for just diving in like that with concerns.

Barkuti posted about the charger over at ECF (electronic cigarette forums) and I was quite excited to see this project coming to light. I had to chime in to say I think it’s a fantastic idea. :slight_smile:

Nice to see you Mooch. Been in the e-cig forums for years. Always enjoyed your candidness with these battery manufacturers. How many years ago was the efest fiasco? lol

Agree. Many laptop power supplies use such standard plug, it could then be powered by a typical 19V 65W/90W brick. The charger could be sold with or without power supply at different price points. LiitoKala does this.

I for example have many “retired” quality laptop bricks which I could easily convert to ∅5.5 × 2.5mm plug if needed.

Of course what I'm trying to imply here is that, with such long list of charger features and a minimum of quality, what manufacturer is willing to make a device which such potential to cannibalize its own products? The ones who already have good chargers at beefy price points may not.

A quality charger with so many features and an expensive power brick at $49? Maybe a little more money would be more realistic. Or a tiny bit less without the brick.

LiitoKala may want to go with this. They do not have a high end charger, thus 0% chance of cannibalization. Careful negotiation may be due to make 'em understand the quality and feature requirements. Also, if they were to want to make a cut-down version later, I'd at least tell them to name it differently.

DLYFULL is also a good candidate. This would turn out to be their “flagship” charger or sort of. Careful negotiation is due too.

By the way, to ensure proper cooling of cells their slots may need some holes or slot gaps on the floor.

Sun, 08/25/2019 - 05:31; Sun, 08/25/2019 - 05:34

OMG…that Efest fiasco. Such a fail on their part.

I’m unaware, what was that about?

+ 1

Efest had some spectacularly overrated cells that I tested and called them out on. They tried to rebut my conclusions with some technically pitiful statements and a laughable video and then tried to attack my integrity and discredit me. They had no idea how a battery rating was set.

And they totally miscalculated the massive backlash they received from it

I remember that now!

I think that's when I learned Mooch's name.

@BlueSwordM:

Sorry for bringing this back to attention once again but is my request from ► here ◄ reflected in the feature list? In terms of safety when charging LiFePO₄ I'd really appreciate a charger that not automatically (re)starts with a 4.20V default. So, requiring a "push button xyz to start charging" would be a nice and inexpensive add on. :-)

On a side note: Should you or the manufacturer need any help with native German language support for the manual, let me know.

Cheers,

Thomas

I doubt a charger would restart with a different chemistry/voltage setting unless power is cycled, which is wrong anyway. Charger restart sucks butt. As an example, according to HKJ reviews LiFePO4 restart is set so high in TP5000 DIY modules (old blue, newer red) that it keeps knocking on/over the battery.

I can say the same for (Castillian) Spanish. :-D

Presuming ≈85% efficiency for the internal buck converters let me say power consumption will indeed go well above 60W peak. 24V 3A power supplies are common (and relatively cheap).

We have to watch out for going too high in voltage though as it increases parts costs (due to their higher voltage ratings) and a higher input-to-output-voltage-ratio can be more expensive to design for. Voltage spiking from plugging an energized power supply into the charger will be more severe too and the supply’s switching duty cycle range can be limited with a high in/out voltage ratio. This limits the possible output voltage range of the supply.

Planned input voltage range for this charger goes up to 30V, to make it compatible with industrial vehicles.

I must admit that “high current” via a standard 5.5 × 2.5mm DC plug creeps me out a bit, already seen many shoddy plugs of that class. HP's 7.4 × 5.08mm DC power connector is a lot better, imho.

@Barkuti, 30V compatibility was not made for vehicles.

It’s been made from a suggestion from a prohiminent member from SecondLifeStorage.

This below?

Who cares anyway. Lets make it good.

Not only TheOnlyDocc, but someone else I will not yet name until I post a similar thread to SecondLifeStorage.

And yeah, who cares?! It’s a great feature anyway for not only automobile users, but also 7S li-ion battery pack owners.

Mmm, how about centrifugal fan cooling? Sucking from above and shooting to a side, above or below. 4 small, inexpensive centrifugal fans on the floor could also work very nicely (with throttling, of course), shooting to the sides or above and below and providing redundancy. The high presure of blowers ensures airflow even if by design the chassis is a bit restrictive.

After reading some of the resent comments this is probably going to be something much more complicated than most people need. I think I’d be much better off with something like the DLYFULL UT4 someone posted about earlier in the thread.