Home
Overview
Moped
Insurance
Battery
Balancing
Feedback
Privacy
Policy
External Links
Electric
Motoring Forum
Nig's
Ego Blog
Hohisilver's
Blog
|
Part
2
Making
the new DC converter
The
original DC converter on the Ego is not designed to work with the
high voltages provided by six fully charged batteries. Commercially
available converters for these voltages are available but are usually
designed for use on large yachts and so are prohibitively expensive for
our application.
We are therefore going to make our own converter by modifying a
commonly available LCD TV power supply unit. This is a very simple
modification; no components need to be added, so anyone with some
soldering skills should be able to carry it out. The first thing to do
is plug the power supply unit (PSU) into the
mains and make sure it works as it will be too late to send it back to
the supplier once we’ve modified it. Test the output with a
multimeter, it should read 12 volts between the outer metal part and
one of the pins. The other 3 pins are not connected to anything. If you
haven’t got a multimeter then we recommend you get one.
Maplin
sell one for around £7 and it will come in handy during the
whole
of this 72 volt project.
Next step is to open up the PSU. Remove the mains lead and leave it for
a few minutes to make sure that the capacitors have discharged. Pull
off the 4 rubber feet on the bottom and remove the 4 screws that are
underneath them. The plastic casing will now come off.
Remove the metal shielding and the plastic layer from the PSU. Desolder
the mains socket and remove it. Cut the plug off the output wire to
leave about 1 foot connected to the PSU and push this wire through the
main body and out the other end. It should now look like this.
|
|
