zondag 12 november 2017

3D printed Racal Cougar Battery

I have been thinking of 3D printing accu's for the Racal Cougar for a while and this weekend i fired up OpenSCAD and had a go at it.


Like most of the older surplus radio devices there is a shortage of batteries for the Racal Cougar also. You can find them but most of them are dead and need their cells to be replaced. Replacing the cells is a matter of carefully opening the casing using a hobby knife or saw, removing the old cells and replacing them with newer cells.

The problem with this is there is little room in the casing and you need to solder the cells together which is tricky. I did this a couple of times and in some cases i even overheated the cells damaging them.


3D printed accu

Inspired by the MA-4516B from Racal i wanted to have something which i could take apart easily and use regular cells in without have to solder them.

Center, top and bottom parts

I designed the accu so it has 3 sections: a top section containing the locking mechanism and the power connections, a center section containing the cells and a bottom part.


Center part of the accu housing the cells.
Using the dremel i created two pieces of pcb and soldered battery springs coming from a couple of cheap battery clips. These boards connect the batteries together so the accu is made up of 8 serial connected cells.


When the bottom and top parts are connected to the center part using M3 bolts these boards will be sandwiched between it and stay in position.

The center contact is made up of a M3 Hex bolt cut to length and both metal lips on each side are coming from a dead donor accu.


What is next ?

The design is a tight fit, a bit to tight causing some tension on the bottom part. I need to redesign the parts so all parts fit without applying some tension. Also the metal lips currently come from a donor accu and i would like to create the from metal strips also so we have a 100% DIY accu.