Custom battery/inverter box

[coppertop_01]

This design has gone through 4 different setups, started life as a battery and a loose power inverter, second year installed all of it and a second battery into a red tool box, had some problems with my 250w inverter so in the third year it was replaced with a 1000w inverter......barely got used, broke my leg in the summer that put me on the sidelines for 6 months. Went to clean, repair and charge it up and it was on its last legs, both batteries were gone and the tool box had so much corrosion that the bottom of the steel was so thin I didn't think it would support the batteries. So last Sunday I took all the pieces to work (including newish batteries) and built a new, better, stronger and shiny new box.

Case, 16ga stainless steel welded and polished, double lip and weather stripping for water protection, handles also double as vents for the inverter, wiring and orerhangs to protect against water intrusion, stainless piano hinge with a nice little locking catch (not pictured, I installed and finished the wiring after the pics were taken)

All in all, spent 5-6 hours to design, program, laser, form, weld, polish, install parts and wire......that is a good day

Jer

 

[dwh]

Clean. But man...those battery terminals are close to that metal. Made me cringe when I saw it.

 

[wrcsixeight]

I wouldn't be comfortable with charging those batteries with the lid closed, and bathing the inverter in the acid mist. Mis matched batteries in parallel increase the chance that one battery is going to spew a lot more mist than the other.

Also, while in general batteries do not offgass when discharging, I would not like a spark source like an inverter mounted above the batteries, bathed in explosive gasses.

I would have put the inverter in its own container on the side.

 

[coppertop_01]

Agreed on the terminals, when I designed it I thought there was more room, but when I added the sealing lip it removed some of that room......still more room than the previous designs had.

Charging is done with the lid open on a stand up charger, in general I'm not too worried about the gasses during use since its mounted outside and between the internal fan and whatever breezes are around it should keep the box clear of buildup, but I will keep that in mind and make changes if I notice a problem.

Jer

 

[ricel]

Look into an AGM (absorbed glass Matt) battery setup instead of a wet (current setup)

Wet cell batteries produce a gas at charge up and a little at discharge, hence the vents.

AGMs are a solid sealed battery and do not produce a gas. They are also able to be mounted on any position and take much more of a beating (physically and electrically)

They are also much more resilient to long strong draws (fridge lights power inverters)

 

[coppertop_01]

Agreed on the battery, in time yes, due to the rush to get everything ready and cost of said batteries I had to go with something I could grab cheaply. They are a generic GM battery so swapping them out later (bonus/performance review time) won't be hard.

Jer

 

[dwh]

Mis matched batteries in parallel increase the chance that one battery is going to spew a lot more mist than the other.

Now that you mention batteries in parallel, I looked again and see that both the pos and neg for the inverter are wired to one of the batteries. If it was a matched set of batteries in parallel, the inverter neg should be on the other battery to balance the load.

 

[trailscape]

I put together a similar one myself, but I used a couple 35ah sealed batteries (UPG 12350). It's reasonably lightweight too.

 

[coppertop_01]

Damn, yours reminded me that I have a few sealed batteries at my work.......they were bought for my bosses kids power wheels (I modified it, with four 6V 20ah sealed batteries), but in a long story they were wrong and the truck was slow but lasted forever.......plus his kids are also over 13 now (and hockey players) so they totally won't fit.........and its still sitting at the shop, I think the batteries are going to go be re-purposed.

Small problem is that they are 6 volt, so I'm going to have to run two sets in series to make them 12 volt and run the two series sets in parallel to bring them from 20ah to 40ah, going to be a slight drop from the twin car batteries which produce 50ah but it should be fine.......then look at making a connection to my trailer's parking lamp circuit with a load resistor so that they will trickle charge when the parking lamps are on, plus I wouldn't mind getting a small solar panel to keep it going over a week.

Jer

 

[JIMBO]

:sombrero: An inverter should be external--their fan will need air flow, for internal cooling and they do get warm-

:costumed-smiley-007:wings: JIMBO

 

[VistaCruiser]

There's alot of different set-ups on AR15.com also, for other ideas. Search battery box.

Sam

 

[southpier]

got a link?

 

[Wicked 2007]

got a link?

http://bit.ly/12hUxp7

 

[southpier]

let's hope their collective aim is better than their building skills

 

[VistaCruiser]

Some are a little crude, but innovative (like the cooler deal). Some are very PRO, as some of the guys there are S.A.R. & such.

Sam