DIY Battery for Maxabeam

minim

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Oct 2, 2018
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I've found a maxabeam without battery so I will need to build me one. I've built 18650 packs before (up to 12S4P) and I really like those cells. From what I've read the maxabeam needs at least 10V to run and max 13.5V input. This makes 18650 hard to use since a 3S pack would be max and then I can only discharge to about 3.3V/cell.

What at is my best options here? Is there any circuit I could use to drop voltage from a 4S 18650 pack down to regulated 13V efficiently or should I look into other types of cell.

Is anyone familiar with the connectors used by maxabeam? It looks like some kind of Amphenol plug.

I just got confirmation from Annie at peakbeam that 10-13.5VDC is the operating range but they say that powering it from the car will be fine due to voltage drop in the cables. I found a 15A stepdown from max 40V to 12V from polulu. It's rated for 32A peak current so that should work for lamp start. Efficiency with 15-20V input is around 95% so it should'nt be to bad loss. The step down can operate from 14.5V min so that rules out a 4S config. Since Peak beam has a 10Ah battery and I assume its 12V-ish thats 120Wh to use. Going with 5S3P with LG 18650 M36 3600mAh cell with approx 11.2Wh/cell at my load should give me 168Wh and counting efficiency loss of 6% around 158Wh. Since their 120Wh gives a lot of runtime I think this will be sufficient. Another benefit of using the stepdown is that the input voltage for the light will be the same from full to empty cells. Anyone see any problems here? I might look for a little bigger stepdown but 15A rated should really be fine when high beam is 8.5A. Going with panasonic NCR18650b would give the same numbers and load should be safely within the batteries spec on 3A/Battery but max 6,5A at startup is slightly above what panasonic recommends that's why I picked LG with 10A discharge.

step down - https://www.pololu.com/product/2885
Battery test : https://lygte-info.dk/review/batteries2012/LG 18650 M36 3600mAh (Cyan) UK.html

Maxabeam spec:

Low Beam Mode 3.38 ± 0.04 Amps 25°C, 12VDC Input
Normal Beam Mode 4.35 ± 0.04 Amps 25°C, 12VDC Input
High Beam Mode 8.48 ± 0.05 Amps 25°C, 12VDC Input
Peak Current at Lamp Start 20.5 ± 3.2 Amps 25°C, 12VDC Input
 
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NoNotAgain

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Blue Ridge Mountains, VA
Peak Beam Systems for the Maxa Beam light supplied both lithium ion as well as LiFePO4 battery packs.
The LiFePO4 battery placard shows a voltage of 12 volts.
The lithium ion battery placard shows 14.8 volts.
I just checked the voltage of both types of packs, and both indicate 13.6-13.7 volts fully charged.

Any board that has the ability to regulate charging of a series of 18650 cells wired in a 4S configuration will be fine.
 

minim

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Joined
Oct 2, 2018
Messages
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Peak Beam Systems for the Maxa Beam light supplied both lithium ion as well as LiFePO4 battery packs.
The LiFePO4 battery placard shows a voltage of 12 volts.
The lithium ion battery placard shows 14.8 volts.
I just checked the voltage of both types of packs, and both indicate 13.6-13.7 volts fully charged.

Any board that has the ability to regulate charging of a series of 18650 cells wired in a 4S configuration will be fine.

Thank you for checking. Maybe they have some sort of step down inside the pack also then. a Lithium ion showing 14.8V (nominal) should be 16,8V fully charged. Have you ever opened the battery to inspect the BMS/output circuit?

Actually Annie specifically advised me against running a 4S Lipo/Liion battery directly as the voltage is to high. Another member I spoke with also had a servo on his going bad when trying a 4S pack so I'm not sure it's a good idea to exceed the spec by as much as 3,3V/25%.
 
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FRITZHID

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Icelandic wastelands of Monico, WI
Thank you for checking. Maybe they.......

..... Another member I spoke with also had a servo on his going bad when trying a 4S pack so I'm not sure it's a good idea to exceed the spec by as much as 3,3V/25%.

Yeah, that was me. One g2 i have will NOT run at all on 4s cell pack (other than rapid strobing and the other ran fine until one day the focus servo just up and seized. Be better to run 3s & 2-4p fit the extra runtime.
 

minim

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Oct 2, 2018
Messages
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Yeah, that was me. One g2 i have will NOT run at all on 4s cell pack (other than rapid strobing and the other ran fine until one day the focus servo just up and seized. Be better to run 3s & 2-4p fit the extra runtime.

Yeah I won't risk $4-500 cost in parts on running it above what they recommend..

You have a good point there sir with just accepting the possibility to not discharge them fully. I see from discharge graph on a Samsung 30Q that you are at approx 8.5wh of 10.2Wh total at 3.4volts. That's 83% of the capacity when counting 2.8V as end but thats low so its more like 90%. This is with 3A load. Comparing that to Panasonic ncr18650b 3400mAh cells they will give 6.2Wh at 3.4 volts so the lower total capacity is actually better. 83% isn't horrible and it will prolly make the cells last longer. Maybe a 3S6P would do the job. I have a 3S5P I built for my little girls toycar so I will test this first before I build one for the job :)
 

minim

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Oct 2, 2018
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Is the a good place to buy the battery connector? Mine will arrive tomorrow but I thought I had good time before it would arrive so I didn't order any connectors yet. Found a thread with some info about there but I couldn't manage to find all the needed parts and figure out what I needed..

Edit:
It arrived and I got to test it with my Samsung 30Q 3S5P (15Ah) pack. It was not fully charged so it stayed at 12.3V before I put the light on and dropped to 12.08V with max power (85W). The 230V power source from maxabeam was at 13.55V. This BMS will cut power at 2.8V and that's lower than maxabeams 10V so I will build me another pack for the maxabeam with an adjustable BMS so it cut the power before it hit 10V. Since I don't have proper connectors I soldered on a XT60 plug now just for testing. Will try to find proper ones and make the pack with proper plug :)

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Did a short test now just between daylight/twilight here in Norway (18:00) and 250meters out I could spot the beam on the trees :D The Astrolux MF02s didn't show what-so-ever when I tested that. Going to be fun in 1-2hours when it's dark.
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Edit2:
Still not dark outside but I just had to. The power is insane. This is out at approx 485meters / 530 Yards.

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minim

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Oct 2, 2018
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So I threw in a little design for a DIY battery box. I'm very happy with how it ran with the 3S5P pack that I have so I will make a similar pack. I'll prolly rearrange the inside but I just placed 15 cells and the BMS there so I could see how everything fit. I don't want to make the box slimmer since I'd like the flashlight to sit on the battery box and not the lens if I set it down on a flat surface. Might do a 3d print tomorrow just to see that the design works. The final version will be milled on my cnc prolly in POM. On a very little scientific load test yesterday I had the flashlight running 45minutes at my desk + playing with it outside for 15-20 min and then I put in about 5500mAh (about 1/3 of the pack) so runtimes should be plenty for my use.

battboxrender.png

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