OPUS low voltage fan

Hello new to this forum. Have been searching for quite some time and can’t seem to find anyone with the same problems.

I recently bought a new OPUS charger because I have to many cells to proccess for a single one to handle. At the same time I also bought two 80x80x15 5V 0.1A fan for a 3D printed mod to keep the charger cool and do a steady 1A charge and discarge on all 4 cells. This seemed to work fine for like 3 - 5 cells groups/swaps. And now the fan is not working at all, not the 80mm fan or the stock one. When measuring the voltage coming from the fan header it seems all off. It’s really low and not supplying almost any voltage at all, it’s currently hovering around 1V.

AND on top of that my second modded charger just started acting up as well. it seems to throw out 12V from the fan header now. This might be the same behaviour that kill the other fan but i’m not sure. As I only just noticed it yesterday when doing my hourly checkup. Anyone got any ideas? I have seen another 3D fan mode where he uses some 12V points next to the fan and a DC-DC step down converter. But this will only my last attempt. The “new” charger is only a few weeks old and it’s not that long ago since I put it into service.

Have anyone experienced this strange behavior too or know a way to fix it? It’s strange that just swapping the fan out for a 80x80x15 5V 0.1A fan should suddently kill both of the chargers in this strange way.

Best regards!

I don’t have an answer to your question but your username is cool.

Thank you haha. I wish you had something but it’s better than nothing I guess. haha :slight_smile:

Pretty obvious the charger does not like that fan, could be throwing back a ripple voltage maybe?
Pull the second one now before it damages the circuitry.

For now get yourself one of the laptop cooling fans that goes below the computer and place the Opus on that over the fan. Have done this when my first Opus had weak/dead fan and it worked great.
Most run off USB

I got a replacement fan from Fasttech that worked fine but is was also available elsewhere. Check old posts on Opus fans and you will probably find it.
Good luck

I fear you are right. I just don’t get why they would not like the fan in the first place tho. Seems odd to me. But that might just be it then. Will try and do the DC-DC step down mode instead then on the one that is completly dead and monitor it a bit more. Their don’t seem to be anything wrong with the fans - the both work quite fine.

It just seems so weird that they would do anything to the charger itself that would make it start throwing 12V out it’s 5V fan header. I might try and get the PCB board out to look on the other side of it. But those springs are pretty annoying to get off.

I’m talking about this mod with 12V output. Seems like both my opus chargers still throw out 12V from their.

That is a neat mod, gotta love 3D printers.

Yes it’s pretty awesome. Tho i already spend like 10 hours printing the other cases the 80x80 onces. But I’m gonna scrap those now. Do you think the chargers PCB board is already dying tho? Since it’s already throwing out 12V from the fan port. I might just disconnect the fan and run with the other 60mm fan setup instead.

I don’t KNOW, but I suspect the circuit that was designed to handle the……tiny……Opus fan is not going to be happy running an 80mm fan to boot. Don’t know if it will kill the circuit but I don’t recommend it

I do use external cooling on almost any of my chargers when working hard (discharge, max charge with full bays), but those fans are also power externally. I did mod the Opus fan with a much better one after about 2 years of lubing it every few months. It would get noisy or sluggish after awhile. Crappy fans.

Yeah the fan provided with the charger is really bad. I mean a 5V fan is a 5V fan. It’s really only the amount of current that is drawed that might be different. But I have no idea why it would start acting up like that. But that’s just how it is then. I will try the other mod instead. Don’t want to ruin the fan port again. Just hope the 60mm fan mod don’t ruin the charger anymore.

But flydriver, what external usb fan are you running? I might just print the 60mm mod case and power it using a usb powered fan or something. Or maybe even find a 80mm fan that can be powered using usb. Or just buy a usb adapter and solder my 80mm fan to that.

I’m running old PC case fans (80mm/12v) off of old wall warts. I’ll even used 6-9v to lower the speed and noise. Those old 12v 80mm PC fans often weren’t very quiet.
I have used small USB powered fans for personal cooling also. Anything externally powered that moves adequate air for cooling.

Trying to run a 12v fan off of USB power (5v), might work but it would slow that fan down a lot, if it ran. But, that might be OK too.

The fan on the Opus is thermally controlled. Don’t know how that might affect what you are trying to do.
When I’m externally cooling my Opus, the little fan doesn’t run at all. It’s a noisy little twit so that’s fine with me.

The drawback is that my charging stations are a mess of wires for all the devices. That part is a nuisance. Sounds like what you were trying to do was a lot more elegant.

Yeah I was trying to have a simple solution where the overall size of the charger is bigger ofc to fit the new fan. But still only run on the included power supply. But yeah the 80mm fan was apparently too much for it. But will look into other options if the 60mm mod with the DC-DC converter don’t out for me.

Get one of those cheap heavy Laptop power bricks and splice the feed into 2 ports.
The Opus will run better with more input amperage anyway.
Then you can keep your 80 mm box.

Sounds interesting indeed. Do you have some details regarding this?

The come-with fan is variable speed, so the output is regulated, with max voltage and current. Stick a monster fan on that output, and you’ll eventually fry that output.

Unless you, say, stick that monster fan onto the power rails, always on, you gotta use a less-hungry fan on that output.

I still got the original Angry Bumblebee fan, but have the Ope on a phone-stand, almost vertical, to let natural convection cool it, ie, let hot air naturally rise out the fan “chimney” vs having to suck it out sideways with the fan. Helps.

Ah, I suspected that. Thanks for the info.
I also have mine on a stand for more effective cooling, but still train a fan on it when working hard. I figure I’m not only cooling the charger, but keeping the batteries cooler also. Cool battery is a longer lived battery.

Yeah that kinda makes sense. I just thought since people have made that sort of 3D print and other have posted pictures of them doing the same thing. That they would also return at tell that after some time their fan stopped working. But I guess not.