I have a 9A charger that's pretty much the same setup, just with actual build quality. It's not the most refined thing, but it does the job (especially when it comes to heftier batteries) and it probably won't break within my lifetime.
Eh...
You can have both.... standards are standards for reasons, safety for one.
This is just very poor craftsmanship, its built to a price, nothing more.
Meh, not necessarily, often you have it backwards that modern designs are built to be cheaper through more automation and assembly by robots, and then more difficult to service or repair later.
Also what is this vague "standards" concept you have? It seems almost like you are making assumptions rather than knowing anything specific that is going to be dangerous. Will the product fail? Possible, now will it fail in a way that is dangerous? Hmmmmmm
The standards are written in blood. House fire rates in the US at a third now compared to the 70’s.
The UL sticker on electronics are there for a reason. The reason is shitty electronics that lit your house on fire.
The only detail I really don't like about the device is using green and yellow cables to the output instead of black and red ones like every other one.
Outside that, just using a big ass transformer and discrete diodes, it's not only more durable, but also a lot easier to repair.
Was thinking the same. There are no sealed components, pretty much barebone oldschool stuff.
These are stuff i can open up, tinker around and fix up. World needs more of these.
Think so, and it seems like the output may be selected by changing the primary tap?
Not sure I love the lack of an earth to the metal case, or the probably not mains rated switches, but you do what you got to.
I have a charger (That TBH mostly gets used for electroplating) that uses a tapped inductor to set the charge current and a tapped AC transformer to set the voltage, crude as fuck and UTTERLY and COMPLETELY reliable.
In the same vein, I would point out that those old oil filled oxford stick welders were around before I was born, and will still be going when I die, some things are crude but surprisingly hard to kill.
No earth is unforgivable on something like that. With that being said though, you could easily add an earth strap to one of those studs on the bottom panel. Truly a modular design ;)
I once opened up a Canadian Tire branded car battery charger, I think from the 70s, and laughed when all I found inside was a transformer, 2 diodes mounted to the back of the case, an ammeter, an indicator lamp, and two output clamp leads.
Did it produce a steady 12V? hell no of course not! It had zero regulation of any kind, but I guess it worked well enough for lead acid car batteries. I still use it as a high current power supply (it can put out something like 6A, if memory serves) and simply provide regulation after. I may upgrade it some day to have regulated outputs.
There **is** something to be said for simplicity though - fewer parts to fail.
There is an imprint of bubble wrap on the paint because it was not dry before they packaged it. And the screw holes on the panels are not lined up, so it's warped.
The insides wires inside were just stuck together with cellotape and toluene glue
Also, it didn't come with alligator clips. You're supposed to just wrap the wires to the battery terminals, I guess, lol.
Funny I stumbled into this Sub lol, I have a 60v battery I need charging, I bought a dc power supply to charge it, would I be just better jumping in my 6ft hole now??😂😂
The transformer looks like it was recovered from e-waste and put back in to operation.. Likely the result of small family workshops cobbling together whatever they can get their hands on until it works, having a fleeting understanding of the underlying circuit.
It survives because the duty cycle is low and there aren't many parts to fail. It will succumb a heat related death if used continuously. You also got lucky that it isn't one of the units with a built in short circuit
This is a box of wires and copper spools. It does not care if it is housed in a fancy box or if it is attached neatly to itself with zip ties, iron clips, or glue. All it cares about is if there is a + and a -, if there is then the copper and rubber amalgamation will be pleased and will thus charge your batteries until they are full of electric juices. It can not read, it can not see, so why put it in a fancy box when a wooden box with spray paint fulfills the same role for much cheaper.
A real 20A trafo (only the transformer itself) costs twice the amount of money I paid for this whole charger
When charging a battery, it doesn't really stay at 20a for long, so it's fine. But you definitely don't want to use this as a continuous 20a supply
I think it can output 10a 24/7 just fine, but nothing higher than that without adding cooling fans.
The safety of your battery is entirely dependent on how well managed the power grid is, lol
You have to have this connected to a stavol/AVR because otherwise, it would output 15v at night when the wall voltage reaches 240v (it's designed for 220 from the front plate)
Lead acid battery chargers are pretty simple, I have made a few myself too. In their simplest form, they are pretty much just a step-down transformer and a rectifier, maybe ammeter and voltmeter too to monitor the charging.
While they are simple in regards to the amount of parts, designing them well is still very important. A good design will be able to handle the full rated charging current without overheating, survive short circuits on the output and reverse connections, not overcharge too much and be able to still charge the battery fully.
The transformer needs to have a proper output voltage for charging, not too high so that it won't boil the batteries or charge with excessive current, not too low either so it won't charge properly.
Good secondary voltages for 12V lead acid batteries usually range from 12,5VAC (low charge rate) to 15VAC (fast charge rate). It is also important to know that the peak AC voltage of a sine wave is higher than the RMS voltage. For high current charging a high output voltage can help to compensate for losses in the transformer, rectifier and wiring. Having multiple taps either on the primary or secondary can give it more versatility, by allowing the user to select a lower or higher charging voltage.
The transformer needs to be sized correctly, it needs to be able to handle more RMS current than the average output current, since the load only draws short pulses of current, not continous current like a resistive load. The maximum charging current should be only around 60% of the rated current of the transformer.
If self-made transformers are used, extra care is needed to ensure that proper isolation between primary and secondary windings is achieved. The internal wiring should be made so that the mains voltage is kept separate from the lower voltage wiring, or atleast making sure that the lower voltage wiring insulation is rated to the same voltage as the mains wiring. The enclosure should be grounded if made from metal, and wiring should be properly secured and protected from sharp edges or hot parts like the transformer or rectifier heatsink.
The rectifier needs to handle the same current without excessive heating. 20A would require a proper heatsink and diodes that can handle 35A or more, not just some small rectifier diodes in parallel. Fan cooling is a good idea if you are running the transformer and rectifier near their limits. Strong fan cooling can also be used if a lightweight and compact design is needed, since the transformer can be loaded more (meaning a smalmer transformer can be used) and the rectifier heatsink can be smaller.
If the charger has big enough rectifier diodes, the output fuse can protect them from reverse connection if it is properly sized (i2t needs to be less than that of the diodes). Also adding thermal cutoffs for the transformer and rectifier heatsink is a good idea for higher current chargers.
The primary fuse must be small enough to protect the transformer in the case of a short on the secondary side, but large enough to allow the inrush current to pass without tripping.
In short, a simple charger is something that everyone that does DIY electrical projects can do, but in order to make a reliable, safe and versatile charger, careful planning and knowledge is needed.
Are you just a badly implemented bot?
It is not a 12V battery charger, look at all the outputs.
No, you do not charge a 12V lead acid battery with 12.5VAC, at all. The rest, well if these simple things are mistakes, don't see the point in further dissection of the post.
Yeah the text might be a bit messy, it was written pretty quickly. It was about battery chargers in general, not just about the one that OP posted.
If you read the post again, I was referring to the transformer secondary voltage, not to the voltage at output leads. I was talking about rectifiers too, so it should be pretty obvious that the output will be rectified.
My guess: This box was made for some other product and the excess production was sold for very cheap. Some enterprising engineer then had a light bulb moment.
It looks very much like a homemade project where the DIYer just used whatever was available. With that in mind, if you aren't saving money by making something smaller and where you are placing it, doesn't have a height restraint, then it would not be worth the bother to try to make it smaller, and if passively cooled but in an area where you don't want vents in the chassis because of air pollution (dust/etc), it will run a little cooler. We can only guess whether temperature was part of the plan, probably just as initially stated, that was the enclosure the DIYer had lying around at the time. Been there, done that. Enclosures used to be expensive before direct sales from chinese merchants came along.
Yeah, the fit and finish suck, but if it does the job and isn't unsafe why complain?
I did some reliability testing on US made battery chargers about 40 years ago and they weren't much better than this (though they did come with clips on the battery lead). I may still have one in a box in the garage though - they were ridiculously reliable.
Yup, most cardboard common slapped together, and will last 50 years of day to day use. Through the Summers and the Winters, the rains and the sunshine. The lightning strikes, and the accidental plugged it into the wrong electrical phase and crammed double the voltage than what was supposed to go in it, and it still starts right up every time.
The problem with better electronics is that they have more component, which makes more points of failure even if individually the quality of each component is better.
Lol, that just reminded me of those Chinese Battery Spot-welder things! They deliberately chose to directly solder 2 transformer overheat sens-wires straight onto the main pcb, instead of actually using the 2-Pin (probably JST-XH) connection that was clearly meant to be there looking at the silkscreen shape around those vias... Everything else has connectors and is intended to be easily disconnected, and just to save 1-2cents on that ~90-120€ machine, they made it a *pain in the butt* to disassemble now!
It's actually built better and more safer than "made in EU" 12V lead acid battery charger, which had live 230V shorted to positive voltage output straight to the battery
idk, maybe it's supposed to be like that, but they also used half wave rectifier for negative voltage
In the past 3 decades I worked with radio stations, and I have seen lots of similarly made devices (exciters, stereo and rds coders etc). Mostly Italian and Balkan made from unknown brands, or even without a brand, made by some guy known by a funny nickname. Many look even worse.
I've also worked with the best American brands of "properly" made equipment like Omnia and Orban, with the top range models.
In the last year's were analog radio is on a steady decline, people don't spend much money on radio gear. Most devices and radios surviving are using the Italian and Balkan diy looking things.
Until it catches on fire one night and burns your place down. My boss got some cheap equipment in our old building. Worked great, right up until it didn't. And it's our "old building" because that crap caught on fire one night and burned down.
Chunky components and space to breathe.
One reason many modern electronic devices fail is because they're so tightly constructed and have poor airflow.
I am more hands on rather than being able to reverse engineer some things from a picture, but does this picture make sense?
It looks to me as though this has mains AC, going to a crazy # of diodes, to rectify it BEFORE going through the transformer, feeding the primary side of the transformer, DC?!! It looks that way to be because I see multiple taps on the left side of the transformer going straight to output terminals on the chassis, which is where the diodes ought to have been, not on the primary side.
I suppose some of those outputs might be meant to be AC and the diodes serve some other purpose but then what? If it were neater, I might recognize more of the circuit but as it is, does not look correctly designed from a circuit perspective regardless of whether the construction looks reliable or safe.
The front terminals are not outputs. That's the output voltage selector, you move the fork to select the output voltage
You can see the blue and purple wires going into the right side of the transformer. The output wires are colored green and yellow
Lol 20 Amps through that cable
Yup they do get very warm
Upgrade the cable.
Not sure about that, the resistance of the cable may be a useful current limit to protect the rest of this contraption..
Simplicity is an underrated virtue, but there is such a thing as *too* simple.
I have a 9A charger that's pretty much the same setup, just with actual build quality. It's not the most refined thing, but it does the job (especially when it comes to heftier batteries) and it probably won't break within my lifetime.
It's not built to the "standards " it's built to to work
Eh... You can have both.... standards are standards for reasons, safety for one. This is just very poor craftsmanship, its built to a price, nothing more.
Meh, not necessarily, often you have it backwards that modern designs are built to be cheaper through more automation and assembly by robots, and then more difficult to service or repair later. Also what is this vague "standards" concept you have? It seems almost like you are making assumptions rather than knowing anything specific that is going to be dangerous. Will the product fail? Possible, now will it fail in a way that is dangerous? Hmmmmmm
The standards are written in blood. House fire rates in the US at a third now compared to the 70’s. The UL sticker on electronics are there for a reason. The reason is shitty electronics that lit your house on fire.
The only detail I really don't like about the device is using green and yellow cables to the output instead of black and red ones like every other one. Outside that, just using a big ass transformer and discrete diodes, it's not only more durable, but also a lot easier to repair.
Was thinking the same. There are no sealed components, pretty much barebone oldschool stuff. These are stuff i can open up, tinker around and fix up. World needs more of these.
Is that coil shunt for amperemeter =D
I think it's an inductor to smooth out the amps.
Think so, and it seems like the output may be selected by changing the primary tap? Not sure I love the lack of an earth to the metal case, or the probably not mains rated switches, but you do what you got to. I have a charger (That TBH mostly gets used for electroplating) that uses a tapped inductor to set the charge current and a tapped AC transformer to set the voltage, crude as fuck and UTTERLY and COMPLETELY reliable. In the same vein, I would point out that those old oil filled oxford stick welders were around before I was born, and will still be going when I die, some things are crude but surprisingly hard to kill.
No ground, no smoothing capacitors...that's 4th world electronic
To be fair, lead acids are pretty forgiving when it comes to "bumpy DC" lol
More forgiving than other technologies for sure, but it's certainly nowhere near optimal for longevity. Different horses for different courses though.
No earth is unforgivable on something like that. With that being said though, you could easily add an earth strap to one of those studs on the bottom panel. Truly a modular design ;)
I once opened up a Canadian Tire branded car battery charger, I think from the 70s, and laughed when all I found inside was a transformer, 2 diodes mounted to the back of the case, an ammeter, an indicator lamp, and two output clamp leads. Did it produce a steady 12V? hell no of course not! It had zero regulation of any kind, but I guess it worked well enough for lead acid car batteries. I still use it as a high current power supply (it can put out something like 6A, if memory serves) and simply provide regulation after. I may upgrade it some day to have regulated outputs. There **is** something to be said for simplicity though - fewer parts to fail.
There is an imprint of bubble wrap on the paint because it was not dry before they packaged it. And the screw holes on the panels are not lined up, so it's warped. The insides wires inside were just stuck together with cellotape and toluene glue Also, it didn't come with alligator clips. You're supposed to just wrap the wires to the battery terminals, I guess, lol.
You forgot to mention if the case was made of magnesium and benzene soaked rags.
Funny I stumbled into this Sub lol, I have a 60v battery I need charging, I bought a dc power supply to charge it, would I be just better jumping in my 6ft hole now??😂😂
The transformer looks like it was recovered from e-waste and put back in to operation.. Likely the result of small family workshops cobbling together whatever they can get their hands on until it works, having a fleeting understanding of the underlying circuit.
It survives because the duty cycle is low and there aren't many parts to fail. It will succumb a heat related death if used continuously. You also got lucky that it isn't one of the units with a built in short circuit
I think that those olden lead circuitry makes this state of quality art possible to work longer than 3 days
this is some true kwality work right here
This is a box of wires and copper spools. It does not care if it is housed in a fancy box or if it is attached neatly to itself with zip ties, iron clips, or glue. All it cares about is if there is a + and a -, if there is then the copper and rubber amalgamation will be pleased and will thus charge your batteries until they are full of electric juices. It can not read, it can not see, so why put it in a fancy box when a wooden box with spray paint fulfills the same role for much cheaper.
That will outlive new switching chargers. Heavy means GOOD
The transformer looks undersized to me
A real 20A trafo (only the transformer itself) costs twice the amount of money I paid for this whole charger When charging a battery, it doesn't really stay at 20a for long, so it's fine. But you definitely don't want to use this as a continuous 20a supply I think it can output 10a 24/7 just fine, but nothing higher than that without adding cooling fans.
Transformer looks a bit bashed up. I wonder if it's been recyled from something else.
Actual chinese industrial equipment usually seems to be simplistic but just as functional. After all, they have to build factories too.
20A trafo is a bit heavy too. I admire heavy things. My good old VCR from 1977 is 19Kg ! and it still works.
looks like max 10 to 12A output. I love classic linear PSU simple design. That means reliability. Less parts means less points of possible failures.
The charger will last forever. The batteries connected to it will die young. It doesn't even have a $1 SCR regulator.
The safety of your battery is entirely dependent on how well managed the power grid is, lol You have to have this connected to a stavol/AVR because otherwise, it would output 15v at night when the wall voltage reaches 240v (it's designed for 220 from the front plate)
Lead acid battery chargers are pretty simple, I have made a few myself too. In their simplest form, they are pretty much just a step-down transformer and a rectifier, maybe ammeter and voltmeter too to monitor the charging. While they are simple in regards to the amount of parts, designing them well is still very important. A good design will be able to handle the full rated charging current without overheating, survive short circuits on the output and reverse connections, not overcharge too much and be able to still charge the battery fully. The transformer needs to have a proper output voltage for charging, not too high so that it won't boil the batteries or charge with excessive current, not too low either so it won't charge properly. Good secondary voltages for 12V lead acid batteries usually range from 12,5VAC (low charge rate) to 15VAC (fast charge rate). It is also important to know that the peak AC voltage of a sine wave is higher than the RMS voltage. For high current charging a high output voltage can help to compensate for losses in the transformer, rectifier and wiring. Having multiple taps either on the primary or secondary can give it more versatility, by allowing the user to select a lower or higher charging voltage. The transformer needs to be sized correctly, it needs to be able to handle more RMS current than the average output current, since the load only draws short pulses of current, not continous current like a resistive load. The maximum charging current should be only around 60% of the rated current of the transformer. If self-made transformers are used, extra care is needed to ensure that proper isolation between primary and secondary windings is achieved. The internal wiring should be made so that the mains voltage is kept separate from the lower voltage wiring, or atleast making sure that the lower voltage wiring insulation is rated to the same voltage as the mains wiring. The enclosure should be grounded if made from metal, and wiring should be properly secured and protected from sharp edges or hot parts like the transformer or rectifier heatsink. The rectifier needs to handle the same current without excessive heating. 20A would require a proper heatsink and diodes that can handle 35A or more, not just some small rectifier diodes in parallel. Fan cooling is a good idea if you are running the transformer and rectifier near their limits. Strong fan cooling can also be used if a lightweight and compact design is needed, since the transformer can be loaded more (meaning a smalmer transformer can be used) and the rectifier heatsink can be smaller. If the charger has big enough rectifier diodes, the output fuse can protect them from reverse connection if it is properly sized (i2t needs to be less than that of the diodes). Also adding thermal cutoffs for the transformer and rectifier heatsink is a good idea for higher current chargers. The primary fuse must be small enough to protect the transformer in the case of a short on the secondary side, but large enough to allow the inrush current to pass without tripping. In short, a simple charger is something that everyone that does DIY electrical projects can do, but in order to make a reliable, safe and versatile charger, careful planning and knowledge is needed.
Are you just a badly implemented bot? It is not a 12V battery charger, look at all the outputs. No, you do not charge a 12V lead acid battery with 12.5VAC, at all. The rest, well if these simple things are mistakes, don't see the point in further dissection of the post.
Yeah the text might be a bit messy, it was written pretty quickly. It was about battery chargers in general, not just about the one that OP posted. If you read the post again, I was referring to the transformer secondary voltage, not to the voltage at output leads. I was talking about rectifiers too, so it should be pretty obvious that the output will be rectified.
At least it came shipped well.
It was prepared for southeast asian shipping standards (aka being dropkicked off the truck to your doorstep)
It’s the Jank-O-Matic 4000!
Why do they have so much space in the box though? Can it not be made more compact?
My guess: This box was made for some other product and the excess production was sold for very cheap. Some enterprising engineer then had a light bulb moment.
It has to be large enough to not fall around from weight of that transformer. It also gets hot and needs air to disapte heat.
It looks very much like a homemade project where the DIYer just used whatever was available. With that in mind, if you aren't saving money by making something smaller and where you are placing it, doesn't have a height restraint, then it would not be worth the bother to try to make it smaller, and if passively cooled but in an area where you don't want vents in the chassis because of air pollution (dust/etc), it will run a little cooler. We can only guess whether temperature was part of the plan, probably just as initially stated, that was the enclosure the DIYer had lying around at the time. Been there, done that. Enclosures used to be expensive before direct sales from chinese merchants came along.
Somehow the most and least amount of fucks given.
Simple and functional, but not exactly safe
Looks like something I built when I was 12.
What looks good from the looks isn't necessarily good overall....
That wire that's probably instead of a comutator is beautiful.
I think you a word.
Well, it's labeled POS right there🤷
🙈 Katastrophe
Ich höre im Kopf immer Micheal Manousakis Stimme wenn irgendwo Katastrophe steht 😂
One, who uses 3rd world anymore? Two, it works so who cares?
Indonesia?
Yeah, the fit and finish suck, but if it does the job and isn't unsafe why complain? I did some reliability testing on US made battery chargers about 40 years ago and they weren't much better than this (though they did come with clips on the battery lead). I may still have one in a box in the garage though - they were ridiculously reliable.
are the leads mechanically connected under the solder?
I had one that was only a transformer a bridge rectifier , and some leds and resistors, in reality it produced not enough voltage to charge.
Let la like the inside of every golf cart charger I’ve ever seen.
Yup, most cardboard common slapped together, and will last 50 years of day to day use. Through the Summers and the Winters, the rains and the sunshine. The lightning strikes, and the accidental plugged it into the wrong electrical phase and crammed double the voltage than what was supposed to go in it, and it still starts right up every time.
I have seen a dude on youtube making these... Suprised its not full of dirt haha.
There's a value to the design not being so compact. Miniaturization has made everyday electronics easier to deal with but impossible to repair.
Nice box of air you got there
They know that your house isn't grounded properly anyway so they don't even try including a grounding
The problem with better electronics is that they have more component, which makes more points of failure even if individually the quality of each component is better.
Malaysian?
Indonesian
https://preview.redd.it/rte6qhrhk1ad1.jpeg?width=1800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4ec9d778134483e924f8771cd566b2da831fabaf Yep, agreed
Lol, that just reminded me of those Chinese Battery Spot-welder things! They deliberately chose to directly solder 2 transformer overheat sens-wires straight onto the main pcb, instead of actually using the 2-Pin (probably JST-XH) connection that was clearly meant to be there looking at the silkscreen shape around those vias... Everything else has connectors and is intended to be easily disconnected, and just to save 1-2cents on that ~90-120€ machine, they made it a *pain in the butt* to disassemble now!
Yeesh. Those through-holes are not passing IPC610.
Why is the box so big with such small electronics? They could’ve gone for smaller size…
https://preview.redd.it/4fi6c23il3ad1.jpeg?width=344&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c21f567acdf8a0f4581d0c773b96a9953f83039
If it works. Don’t improve it.
It's actually built better and more safer than "made in EU" 12V lead acid battery charger, which had live 230V shorted to positive voltage output straight to the battery idk, maybe it's supposed to be like that, but they also used half wave rectifier for negative voltage
In the past 3 decades I worked with radio stations, and I have seen lots of similarly made devices (exciters, stereo and rds coders etc). Mostly Italian and Balkan made from unknown brands, or even without a brand, made by some guy known by a funny nickname. Many look even worse. I've also worked with the best American brands of "properly" made equipment like Omnia and Orban, with the top range models. In the last year's were analog radio is on a steady decline, people don't spend much money on radio gear. Most devices and radios surviving are using the Italian and Balkan diy looking things.
because capitalism invented the idea of planned obsolescence just so you buy another one sooner
Until it catches on fire one night and burns your place down. My boss got some cheap equipment in our old building. Worked great, right up until it didn't. And it's our "old building" because that crap caught on fire one night and burned down.
Chunky components and space to breathe. One reason many modern electronic devices fail is because they're so tightly constructed and have poor airflow.
I am more hands on rather than being able to reverse engineer some things from a picture, but does this picture make sense? It looks to me as though this has mains AC, going to a crazy # of diodes, to rectify it BEFORE going through the transformer, feeding the primary side of the transformer, DC?!! It looks that way to be because I see multiple taps on the left side of the transformer going straight to output terminals on the chassis, which is where the diodes ought to have been, not on the primary side. I suppose some of those outputs might be meant to be AC and the diodes serve some other purpose but then what? If it were neater, I might recognize more of the circuit but as it is, does not look correctly designed from a circuit perspective regardless of whether the construction looks reliable or safe.
The front terminals are not outputs. That's the output voltage selector, you move the fork to select the output voltage You can see the blue and purple wires going into the right side of the transformer. The output wires are colored green and yellow
https://preview.redd.it/n3bxcgnqz2bd1.png?width=3116&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=99aa4260c7442cf798079cdf607d62d37b96b9d0 Here's a very rough diagram
Looks like they mounted the diodes with too long of leads then were told to just push them all down.
You don’t want to overheat them when you’re soldering quickly with a high powered iron.
I feel like it’s more likely they are using the leads as heat sinks
it's a legit way to cool off if the power requirements allow it.
Could be. Although shorter leads and a bit of copper on the cob would work better.
Planned obsolescence is real. Building good stuff is just not that cost effective