Thunder ac6 as lathe power supply?
 

Before I go digging into my wife's spare pc to steal its power supply, can I use my AC6 on 4 cell NMH to power my comm lathe?

I don't think that nimh mode would work so well because of the deltaV detection, but lithium mode should work just fine if you give it enough amperage. Like 6 amps on a single cell setting. I have never tried though, makes me want to give it a shot this afternoon.

I can program it to do 1 cell at 5 amps on a charge cycle, with no balance. Not sure whether it still wants to sense/verify the cell count before it goes active. Guess I could give it a shot. Kinda wondering if the draw from the lathe will melt the chargers circuits. Kinda like it did the 3 pack of AA's last night.

50w is plenty for a lathe. It may want to see some voltage first for the lithium charge, you are right. I don't think it will hurt anything to try either way.

I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks.

Can't do it. Gives me a low V error and refuses to participate.

Does that charger have a motor break-in feature? Some do and don't look for a connected voltage (sorta obvious).8)

If I had a lipo pack that was below voltage but I wanted to try and get it up to par, I would first plug in a good battery with correct voltage, then after it does its initial check I would unplug it and plug the other pack in.

Maybe you can do the same thing?

CharlieIII-No sir, not that I can find. Thanks though
Erik- Will try that now! Wait. I don't have a 1s. Damn, that might have worked.

Ok, another angle. Will 2s lipo spin it too quickly?

Likely, sorta depends on the dyno but most work well off a fully charged 4 cell NiMH (4.8VDC nominal or ~5.6 fully charged).

Fortunately I run 12th pan cars, so I have a few 4 cell NiMH packs around.8)

Man. Low voltage limit prettymuch kills lipo for use on lathes then.

The lathe will run on a wide range of voltages, the issue is that if you are too fast or too slow the cut sucks. There is a rather specific surface speed the copper comm wants to be cut at, it is NOT a motor limitation.;-)

Guess I'll see if someone has an old school 4 cell they don't need then. Will be easier than the pc psu mod. Would Walmart have a suitable power supply? Got wrangled into a shopping trip this afternoon. Radio Shack is close to there also.

Found a local computer repair shop that's got a box of power supplies that they will let me sort through and get an ATX. Tech sounded pretty interested in what I'm doing, knew about modding the power supplies. Told me to bring the instructions and he'd make sure I understood what needs to be done. Pretty cool. Hoping to get there this afternoon and hit radio shack afterward for the parts. Thanks for the help, will let you know how it turns out.

Sounds great.

I used to ask the IT guys at some of my sites if they had any old rackmount servers, then ask if I could grab a PS. Usually these could be slid in/out easily from the server and were a bit larger in capacity compared to PC PS's.

The ATX PS should be fine though. Have fun."thumbsup""thumbsup"

(PS, "PS" = Power Supply).

It's amazing how well documented this hack is on youtube. Some are much better examples than others, and you can find a geek with whatever accent you prefer. I went with the Boston twang.

So far, the hardest part has been the half hour I just spent cleaning a dollup of solder off the board. Was trying to keep things tidy inside so I cut a yellow 12V wire(for the LED) short enough that I had to solder over the top of the board. DRIP. Dammit. Good to go now. Gravity is your friend sometimes.

I have a question. There are a shit ton of wires for each V type. I've seen guys use ALL of them in one big gnarly bundle to feed the different outputs.
Wouldn't like 3 wires each to feed 5V and ground be more than sufficient to power the lathe? This puts out 22 amps max for 5V.
Not fooling with the 12 and 3.3 tonight. Maybe in the weeks ahead. Gonna try to bundle it up and tuck it away inside the unit.

Well, I went with 4 wires per. It's 16ga, we run hungry 540's on it all the time in our cars. It will be bueno.
One concern. How hot do the heatsinks get on these PS's?
Will it melt the insulation if my wires run in contact with it?

PS- I went ahead and made outputs for the 3.3V and 12V sources. Figured 12V might come in handy to check things on my jeep, and 3.3V is close to motor break-in voltage, right?

This was fun. Here's a few pics.

Looks great shelljeep!"thumbsup""thumbsup"

Yes, 4 wires is likely overkill, better to be safe than sorry.
The heatsinks better not get hot enough to melt the insulation, the melting would be the least of your issues.:shock:

Yes, the 3.3VDC would be good for motor break-in.8) Just let a motor run for a few minutes, disconnect, let it cool, clean it out with motor spray or contact cleaner, check the brushes (to make sure they're not hung) and away you go.