Li - Ion battery fun.

Hal Farsed

Hal Farsed

D.P. Gumby.
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Right, this is doing my crust in. I have an Accucraft Plymouth locomotive and very nice it is too. Handsome, in a sort of American diesel sort of way. Originally, it was a two rail loco like all their electric locos. As most of my stock and locos will not work with a live rail set up, I set about converting it to radio control and batteries. I found a r/c from an American outfit called Monocacy and filled my old brakevan full of batteries for permanent coupling to the shunter. Soon, my crappy old phone siezed up so I decided to reset it, wiping the Monocacy program off it. Then I found Monocacy has gone bust and asked on here if anyone had a copy of the software. Someone did have (thank you!) so I tried to get it working again. I also managed to find the software for myself and kept trying. Nope, no dice. So says I, bu££er it, and I ordered a set of bits from Fosworks. Are you still reading this? Well done. My question is....can I wire up the "Amazon Batteries" like the photo below? This would give me 18v and 1200mAh, that would be enough I think.They would be removed from the loco for charging of course. It would be great if I could power the Pitman motor withough dragging round that brakevan.

Amazon Batteries

batteries.jpg
 
Amazon, or Ansmann?

PhilP
(we do need a link, or the battery specs though)
 
Apologies chaps. the link to Amazon is above the photograph on the left hand side. I have to say I have NO knowledge of these batteries. I thought I would try to learn something and just got smockravelled. It must be my age. :eek:
 
Do you have any other Lithium-based battery loco's?
If everything else you have is NiMH, then stick with that technology..
Grab a load of AA cells, tape them together, and see how they will fit.

I think 14.4V will be adequate, and you can get a 2300mAh pack from Strikalite.
You will also already have a suitable charger.

PhilP
 
4 (9 v) x 600 mAh 2 in series and 2 in parallel should give 18 v 1200 mAh output.
 
Hal Farsed said:
Apologies chaps. the link to Amazon is above the photograph on the left hand side. I have to say I have NO knowledge of these batteries. I thought I would try to learn something and just got smockravelled. It must be my age. :eek:
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Follow what PhilP PhilP says, with the wrong charger for those Amazon batteries nasty things can occur. Though looking at the Plymouth it may be challenging to fit NiMh, think about a set of AAA NiMh. Have a look at my Piko 25tonner conversion to see how I fitted things in.
www.gscalecentral.net

Modifying a Piko 25 Tonner to Battery Power.

Now I imagine that some on here will be wondering why he is doing that when there exists a Battery Powered one already? Well the answer is that I have no need for a Track Cleaning Loco, I want one that is controllable (the Track Cleaner to the best of my knowledge can only be made to go...
www.gscalecentral.net www.gscalecentral.net
 
I'm not sure about these batteries. Alkaline PP3 batteries are generally poor performers because of high internal resistance which means they can't deliver the amps needed to run motors. However, these are li-ion so you might get away with it.

However, I took a look at the feedback comments on the Amazon link and the first caught my attention

I bought these EBL 6F22 600mAh Li-Ion Rechargeable batteries for a vacuum bug-catcher as we have a lot of spiders especially in the autumn season. However, these batteries were struggling to power up the small 9V DC motor within the bug-catcher. I suspect the starting current of the motor is somewhat higher than the max discharge current of the EBL battery. On the EBL site the specs indicate 90MA discharge current, which is non-sense. I measured 1.5-2A starting current on my motor that was no problem for a traditional Varta 200mA Ni-MH 9V Accu. The operating current of the motor is 1A just enough for the EBL battery to keep it running, but as I mentioned the motor will need extra "juice" for starting. As a consequence these batteries seem to be week for powering up DC motors, but I guess there are no issues for other applications where starting currents are below 1A.

You are intending to use them in parallel, so you might get away with it. But there's still a big question mark in my mind.

Rik
 
THank you for all your replies. Upon reflection, I will stick to what I know. I am now considering how to get a dozen AA or probably AAA Nimh batteries aboard the locomotive. I think it will top 4kg! :)
 
Hal Farsed said:
THank you for all your replies. Upon reflection, I will stick to what I know. I am now considering how to get a dozen AA or probably AAA Nimh batteries aboard the locomotive. I think it will top 4kg! :)
Click to expand...
Strikealite made me up a special pack of 4/5 AR batteries for this - they hide under the bonnet

PICT0003.JPG
 
The big advantage of lithium chemistries is the higher energy density... if you have a small space, it helps a lot.

Those batteries are also on Amazon from other vendors, Amazon certainly does not manufacture batteries, they do not manufacture anything.

I like your idea, why not try it out,

there are a number of them on UK Amazon


All batteries should have a charger that is "tuned" to the battery type, lithium are no exception

Greg
 
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