2QD Repairs, Modifications, Thoughts

The repair of the controller has turned into a modification session, too. So it is taking considerably longer than I originally expected or intended.

I'm upping it to 48V capability, changing out a few transistors and whatnot, as well as installing the whole thing into a better case that will provide heatsinking over it's whole surface. The case used to be for a Jensen 300W car AC inverter that doesn't output anything, which I gave up on fixing for now (I can always rehouse it later).

The extruded aluminum case is not very large but is big enough to hold the 2QD board with the power end cut off, 3 very tall low-ESR caps (75V 1500uF each) off that giant UPS board instead of the dinky one I could fit on the 2QD PCB, so much better power filtering, and plenty of surface area to bolt multiple MOSFETs to. Plus I can seal it up for watertightness and still vent all the heat outward, unlike the plastic PacTec project box I had it in before, with the tiny heatsink out the end of it.

I'm still waffling back and forth on whether to just use the TO220 style FDP038AN06 FETs I already use, or the higher-power-handling but higher RDSon TO264 style NTY100N10 FETs I used so well for so long on the original rebuilt ScootNGo controller.

Either way, I have to hand-wire the FETs to the control PCB, as there is no way to fit the whole PCB in there in a way that lets me bolt the FETs directly to the casing, without removing the FETs from the PCB. So I cut the entire end of it off from the gate resistors on, and will just run wires to each FET and then bolt them to the inside of the case, using insulating pads to keep them electrically isolated between the upper and lower halves of the halfbridge.

The case also has a spot for an automotive blade fuse. I am not using it now, but I may wire it in later, once I have an easy way to set a limit for the current on the 2QD. Right now the 2QD limits current via a voltage drop measured across the MOSFETs, so it depends on their RDSon. Since the RDSon of the MOSFETs I am using now is so low, around 3.5mOhms (actually half that since I've got parallel pairs), the current limit is apparently very high. Beyond 153 Amps, at least.

There is a current limit fine adjust resistor, and it's coarse adjust next to it, so I just have to figure out the circuit so I can work out what potentiometer I can install there to give me a good range of limitation I can use, for as low as 5A to as high as 50A (more if I have MOSFETs installed that can handle that). Then I can also use this to test for various different limitations, such as batteries that can't supply as much current, like my Li-Ion and a pair of well-used NiMH packs someone on ES is sending me (which might put out 7A on a good day).

Also so I can test for how well it performs at the actual legal max of 750W. ;)

I've also been charging all the SLAs I have around here for the last week or more. Some of the UPS ones simply won't charge well, but I am still letting them trickle charge in hopes they might recover at least a bit. I think that with the two newer ones that came in that most recent powerchair case, I will have 7 good ones in the 17Ah range, and 2 not very good ones, and one dead one. Plus the three 31Ah U1s I'd started with but changed out due to weight when I got the 17Ah UPS batteries. One U1 seems a little weaker than the other two.

I haven't done a full discharge test on any of them yet, but will do that using the Turnigy meter to get an idea of how many Ah I can realistically expect out of each one, including the three already on the bike.