CR123A Battery Charging Tray

thingiverse

I had 4 LiPo CR123A 3.7V rechargeable batteries laying around but no way to charge them. I started using them in my UV Flashlight for curing Bondic Plastic Weld and AlumiUV in various hobby applications but now they were depleted. I could have bought a charger but this provided a nice challenge. I decided to make a parallel charging tray for these batteries to use with my ISDT Smart Charger I have for my drone hobby. I chose parallel to keep it simple so I wouldn't have to incorporate a balancing lead for the charger. Plus this way it'll charge fine whether I have one battery or four in there. The tray parts were 3D Printed on my Tevo Tornado out of PLA, - Slicer: Cura 3.4 - Temps: HE 198º - B 60º - Layer Height: 0.2mm - Infill: 15% - Cooling Fan: 50% inital layer, 100% afterwards - Supports: none - Raft: no The Solder Rails I cut out on my CNC machine out of <a href="https://goo.gl/MXGfCJ" target="_blank">0.4mm PCB board</a>. I've included the SVG file in the thing files. For the upright battery contacts I just used <a href="https://goo.gl/msQrRe" target="_blank">Copper Foil Tape</a> and put a bead of solder connecting it with the rail to ensure better connection. Wires were 14AWG fed through the holes before soldering to the rail. I left some slack and soldered the wires to the rail before pulling tight through the wire guide and securing the rails to the base with Cyanoacrylate , (Super/Crazy), glue. I soldered an <a href="https://goo.gl/an6qGb" target="_blank">XT60 connector</a> to the wires to suit my charger. Once the wires and rails were soldered and glued into place I slid the Batter Tray into the base ensuring the Positive and Negative indicators were correctly orientated. And that's all there is to it! Enjoy.