My Portable Charging Station

I decided I wanted a bit more LiPo fire safety, and transportability of my charging station since I am joining the Mississippi Coast RC Club (MCRCC) and will need a portable charging station. I had seen this idea on Helifreak done by tptomkins, and have been thinking about it ever since. I had seen a nice all steel toolbox, including a steel handle, at Harbor Freight for $30, and today I decided to make my own portable charging station, so I picked one up. It came out really great and took only an hour or so not counting waiting for paint to dry.

The Harbor Freight steel toolbox that became my portable charging station, on top of my Craftsman 3 door storage cabinet. Nice combo! Labels were made using a Brother P-Touch PT-2430PC label printer.

The steel top pull-out handled drawer holds the P350 Power Supply and my iCharger 208B (from ProgressiveRC), velcroed in using 3M Dupont Dual Lock "velcro". My Hobby King battery voltage monitor is regular velcroed next to the charger so I know where it is. There are two storage compartments separated from the center part where I store the connecting harnesses (parallel multicharger harnesses and the multi-balance harnesses, also from ProgressiveRC), as well as an extra balance board in. I painted the area where I drilled the holes fluorescent orange and edged it with white electrical tape for a clean appearance. The drilling and grinding messed up the original paint a bit. I also think it just looks nicer. I like this design as should a LiPo ignite I can pop the leads, remove the top drawer saving my PSU and iCharger, close the box and chuck it or run away.

Close up of the work I did to make this shelf. I drilled four holes, two up close together, the two below a few cm apart, then Dremeled out the piece between to two farther spaced holes to fit the balance board lead using a reinforced cutting blade. I also Dremeled the resulting holes to make them more uniform and dull the edges using a grinding stone (deafeningly loud...). I filed then sanded the edges. To protect the wires from cutting I placed a thin lip of Liquid Tape rubber stuff to the edges (the greenish edge... didn't have red). To further protect the wires out of the charger I made an extension (see below), and from the connectors down far enough to pass through the holes I shrunk some yellow shrink wrap. To protect the balance board leads I Gooped in a piece of yellow fuel line I cut to fit and split down the middle to fold over the edge. Nice and clean appearing!

Here I've tilted the removable top drawer up so you can see the underside where the charger and balance leads come through. You can see the balance board attached with VHP tape to the underside of the drawer. I put the felt feet to keep the banging down...

LiPo Safe bag is stored in the bottom, and acts as a floor. I will transport batteries in this bottom section and will likely line it with rubber drawer non-skid for appearance, to dampen noise, and to keep the batteries from bouncing around. Discharged batteries will go in the LiPo safe bag and in the bottom compartment. Here you can see the EC5 single charge harness (I was discharging the battery) and the single JST-XH connector from the battery plugged into a ProgressiveRC multibalance harness for 3S batteries.

I love this set up and am pretty pleased with how it came out!

CHARGER EXTENSION

I made the charge lead extension using an extra Alligator Clip charger lead I had. You can see that under the rubber handle what is essentially a female banana connector pin that accepts the male banana plug.

The extra Alligator Clip charging cable.

This is a different, larger, Alligator clip from which I have removed the plastic handle so you can see the banana plug connector (forgot to take pics of the small one I made). The small one I use is the same, but smaller. I cut the Alligator clip off the wires. I used my Burnzomatic torch to melt the solder and remove the pin from the harness; it fell right out.  I then soldered the wires back onto their pins using the torch. If I had just melted the plug off the Alligator clip the solder in the pin cup would have melted and separated anyway, so this was a more controlled and easier way to do it.

I shrink wrapped the pins individually (red and black) and then used yellow shrink wrap to hold them together at the female end to prevent play and secure them. You can also see the yellow shrink wrap around the male pin ends to protect the wire as it passed through the steel drawer.

A close up of the female ends in their shrink wrap. Whichever charge harness I am using now plugs in here instead of directly to the charger.

Here's what the extension (right) looks like connected to an EC5 charge lead (left). I had made this lead previously, with a loose shrink wrap (black) holding the wires together. Everything fits nice and snug!

If you have any questions feel free to contact me!