Lipo Conversions Part 1

If you're into RC at all you're mostly likely know what LiPo batteries are. If you're not have a look here

Having a whole load of these batteries in my garage I've discovered that you can do a whole lot more with them than power RC aircraft. 

So my first LiPo conversion project was to resurrect my trusty battery drill. Its a great drill however it suffers from the same problem that a lot of battery drills do in that if you don't use it all the time the batteries die eventually and also the batteries take a very long time to charge. So I converted mine to run on Lipos and now it not only charges much faster, but I can buy very cheap replacement batteries for it when ever I need to and charge it with my Lipo charger instead of the big bulky charger it came with. 

So here's how to do it. 

Step 1 - Battery Selection.

You'll need to open up the battery that comes out of the handle of your drill and have a look (or measure with a multimeter) at much much voltage the battery supplies. Then you can buy a lipo to match. In my case this was a four cell 1.3 amp hours battery by Turnigy. Its also Important to take into account what the maximum discharge rate that battery will be subjected to is and make sure you get a battery that can handle that. I'm not exactly sure what that is for my drill so i got this 45-90 C discharge batter from HobbyKing for $13.50. The final thing to consider is a battery that will fit in your drill's battery casing. Don't get one too big or it won't fit and you'll be up a certain creek. 

Step 2 - Solder up the connectors 

Once you've got your battery ready to go you'll need to solder the connectors from the battery casing to a plug that will match what ever kind of battery plug you use. I use deans so that what I've connected here. You can work out which is the positive and which is the negative terminal by looking at the old battery you've taken out and seeing how it was connected. 

 

Step 3 - Insert Battery
Once you've got your connectors soldered up you can put your battery in side, plug it in and put the whole thing back in the drill. One mod you could do which I didn't, was to solder another battery connectors outside your battery casing so you can charge it with out taking it out of its case. I simply unscrew the case and take the battery out when I want to charge it. I've actually got two so I just swap the battery over and put a new one in while I charge the flat one.