I want to turn all my power tools and batteries a universal connector like USB-C. I have a 3d printerand skills so getting the manual interface is easy enough, but I don’t a lot about ports and tech. I’m learning fast, but I’m not quite there yet.
From what I understand, I’d need to put a female port on the battery which isn’t difficult and has been done plenty for charging.
I’d need to put a male plug on the tools to interface with it, and my initial research says I can’t just solder the power pins to the cables in the tool, I’ll need a circuit board that requests the 20v from the usb source? Is that doable? It looks like I can pick them up on AliExpress. But I need a qualified adult to verify that’s what I need to do.
From there, would I be able to cord them with this method or would I need to build a better usb charger port?
Is there a better port to use? Usb-C is nice and small so I can fit it in wherever I like, but can it handle tool use? Would it be better to do usb or something else?
USBC (at least in its current form) likely can’t provide enough power to run most tools well also. According to what I can find for Ryobi tools (as an example) they’re rated to pull 10x the Ah rating in A continuously. That means a typical 4 Ah battery can deliver up to 40 A at 18V or 720 W continuously. I’d guess tools pull 400-600 W continuously, and may be up to 25x on start up or stall for a few seconds before the BMS cuts the tool off. USBC maxes at 240W right now. For reference - that’s about half of what a typical NA wall socket can deliver at 120V/15A.
Using USBC to charge batteries is fine but we don’t appreciate just how much energy can be delivered by batteries and how quickly.
You’d have to have something that can deliver that peak amperage without catching fire, and the wiring to handle it too.
As you mentioned, we can already see USB-C charged batteries for power tools out on the market without all the proprietary charging crap from other platforms. As an example, see Greenworks Pro 24v, 4 or 8 Ah and/or Hyper Tough brand
I also haven’t looked at all the specific bells and whistles, but Torque Test Channel on YT has a couple of videos opening them up and testing them, and they do have a circuit board inside the bidirectional charging batteries (either 21700 or 18650 cells), which charges at 65w, and the port also has a little silicone(?) flap to cover it when unused. Perhaps it might be useful as a reference for your trials
See below video “Even More Problems for Big Brands from Walmart”, around 30s mark as an example:
non YT link
YT linkFor the adapter, perhaps you could use this open source terminal_v2 as a reference on the battery side? This one is for Ridgid batteries specifically, so you will need to fiddle with part A to adapt it to your brand battery connector. They used a Molex 44262 series connector on the contacts with the battery for reference.
On the other end, it has anderson connectors, but you could adapt it to xt## depending on your preferences/availability
If you don’t want to open/cut the tool itself, perhaps a dummy + xt/anderson connector on the tool side to connect into terminal_v2 on the batteries side?
Ridgid dummy example from the same author.
Disadvantage of dummies is that you would need one dummy for every brand you have to use
Above dummy also has a dangling cable. I’m not a designer, otherwise I would look into having the dummy with an xt## built into it, than have part B from terminal_v2 have the other xt## built into it, which slides/locks/connect into the dummy. I’m not sure if that was clear, sorry
The author also made a video showcasing the terminal_v2, dummies, and other features that might be useful, see “Build a battery adapter to power the whole Lab”, as it might help:
non YT link
YT linkIf you want to go the OpenBox route shown in the video, this bushing might also be useful, discussed around 22m10s on the video above
I’m not sure if it’s region or my VPN, but all the grabcad links come back with errors. The terminal v2 is almost exactly what I’m looking for though. In that he’s 3d printing an adapter to connect the battery terminals to molex. I want to take it a step further, pop the top off the battery, desolder the proprietary terminals, solder in the molex and then print a male and female mounting track converter. Then pop open the tool and replace that side with molex too. Tgen I just put the parts together as a kit and any time I see a good deal on a tool I don’t have I can gran a bag of parts, hit print, and have it integrated into my battrr system in 30min.
Also I fucking love this openbox thing! When I went through electrician’s I though those boxes looked far too handy to just stuff wires into, and that’s going to give me so much to tinker with.
Right now grabcad isn’t working for me too , but when I accessed it a few days ago, it worked fine on my VPN. Hopefully itś not down for too long.
Keep us updated on how your project goes :)
If you want tools to run off a wire, independent of battery, I’d suggest just buy mains powered tools with built in cords. It’s not worth the hassle - sorry that’s not a very diy answer. I think you’d find most diy tool projects would just use mains rated motors and such.
The power requirements is sort of the reason battery tools take a lot longer to charge than to run down (continuous).
Since you need approximately mains level power, then you need mains rated connectors, or probably even fatter wires depending on how much current there’ll be down at 20V. The tool itself probably has thermal cutoff(s) somewhere in it if it overheats, so you don’t want wires or connectors generating too much heat where that thermal cutoff won’t detect it.
I’d assume you don’t want to add a mains AC:DC 20V 20A converter into the “hand” tool side of the cable so that probably means thicker cables.
Mains powered tools are just designed better to do this @110/220V~. It keeps the current down so you can have thinner, lighter, longer more flexible wire.
Better just limit the USB to top up the battery at lower power. The battery would still deplete in use, but you’d be topping it up in between.
Yeah, I think for better or worse, the most universal and least consumerist “cordless” system is picking up your favorite used Mains corded tools, and getting yourself a Jackery/Ecoflow/whatever battery bank to plug into. This can be really cost effective for a DIY setup.