XT-60 Parallel Battery Adapter
Here is how I made a parallel battery adapter. Mostly because I didn't want to wait for an order from Hong Kong, but also because the commercially available parallel adapter uses #14 AWG wire, which is probably too small for my Hexacopter.
I tried to make one with wires, but I was never happy with my soldering.
I had the two male connectors on my bench when I realized that wires aren't needed:
I laid a piece of #12 solid wire across the three connectors as a bus, and soldered them together.
Then used a piece of heat-shrink that I had on hand to hide the burn marks from the soldering iron.
It definitely worked well. I got probably ten minutes out of today's combination of two cheap 2200's.
If you decide to make one yourself. I hesitate putting two high-power batteries in parallel without some kind of isolation.
Never store the batteries connected together. If one cell drops even a tenth of a volt, you have a dead short to the other battery. Use an inexpensive alarm on both batteries so that if either battery goes below 9V, an alarm starts beeping.
gh my phone.
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Comment by Francisc Bereczky on September 23, 2012 at 10:17am -
I use this type of connection. I have also a small connector to link the two balance connectors. This prevents deep discharge of one cell and only one alarm is needed.
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Comment by Stephen R Mann on September 23, 2012 at 10:51am -
That would keep the individual cells balanced. Where did you find the male header and female socket for the alarm?
I'm sure it goes without saying, but you should not charge the batteries in parallel.
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Comment by Francisc Bereczky on September 23, 2012 at 11:42am
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The male connectors are "self made" and the female socket is from an old 3S battery.
It is very important to connect only two fully charged batteries (individually balance charged).
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Comment by Rui Manuel Cravo Marques on September 23, 2012 at 3:13pm -
:) This is how I make my power distribution boards, only I lay them in cross or hexa configuration.
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Comment by Christopher Cooper on September 23, 2012 at 3:57pm -
Just read your last paragraph and ran off to my study to disconnect my parallel batteries. Only just made a parallel harness this morning so they hadn't been like that long.
Would you happen to have a reference for current carrying capacity of AWG conductors?
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Comment by I.S. on September 23, 2012 at 4:00pm -
Rui, sounds interesting.
Could you provide a photo?
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Comment by Jack Crossfire on September 23, 2012 at 4:16pm -
Dean connectors seem to have patented themselves out of existence. Ever since Hobbyking stopped selling clones, round pin connectors have dominated. Anecdotally, parallel batteries don't have problems, even if the voltage differs slightly. The amount of current transferred between 2 fully charged batteries depends more on the charge level than the voltage difference & isn't enough to blow up. You can always test it with a resistor & volt meter.
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Comment by Rui Manuel Cravo Marques on September 23, 2012 at 4:35pm
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I.S. ,sure, here it goes, sorry for the poor quality but, my phone has no flash. This one is one of my spares and not insulated yet.
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Comment by I.S. on September 24, 2012 at 7:41am
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Thanks for the picture Rui.
How do you insulate de contacts?
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Comment by Rui Manuel Cravo Marques on September 24, 2012 at 8:05am
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After the solderings, I wrap insulating tape around the middle, and before the solderings I put a little piece of cardboard or ply wood separating + and - areas just to make sure.
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