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White’s TDI Battery Modifications


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On 8/30/2018 at 4:40 PM, EL NINO77 said:

there's something to motivate - replacement battery pack li-ion 18650 and battery dimensions - so it will not be a problem to do 4x 18650, or 6X 18650 ... maybe even more ...2007937673_august4iphone5S033_DxO.jpg.a00de2ebcfc0d264ad97cca9c39753da.jpg

Is there anything that you can share on the details of getting the 16 volt battery configuration to fit in the TDI BH?  I have one that I just bought, and I have heard that I can pickup a few inches of detecting depth with the 14.8v vs. 12 v stock config, and maybe even more depth with the 16v config.  I would appreciate any details on whether you saw any harm to the electronics with this extra, applied battery voltage or not, the benefits of the higher voltages, and the needed case mods to make it fit?  Thanks kindly. Brittany.

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On 12/23/2021 at 11:25 AM, BeachBunnyTRHunter - DP said:

Is there anything that you can share on the details of getting the 16 volt battery configuration to fit in the TDI BH?  I have one that I just bought, and I have heard that I can pickup a few inches of detecting depth with the 14.8v vs. 12 v stock config, and maybe even more depth with the 16v config.  I would appreciate any details on whether you saw any harm to the electronics with this extra, applied battery voltage or not, the benefits of the higher voltages, and the needed case mods to make it fit?  Thanks kindly. Brittany.

I put up a huge list of links about making boosted battery packs for TDI. The benefit would be obvious - more depth. This other post best explains the possible downside…

 

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Boosted packs help, but everybody should be aware that Carl, the TDI SL designer, has stated that the SL will tolerate voltages to 22 volts, but if you're running above 20, you should swap some capacitors for higher voltage-rated caps. The SL does tolerate higher voltages than the standard TDI series, however.

Jim

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While the components can handle the higher voltage, Tony makes a good point in the other thread: be mindful of the extra heat generated. A lot of people have successfully run the SL at 14.4V but any higher than that requires some careful diagnostics before you call it done. Otherwise you could end up cooking the circuit.

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Carl, I've run mine as high as 16.8 without problems, but now limit the voltage to 16.0, just to be safe.

But, I've been thinking of a 5 cell battery pack limited to 20v. Might have to raise the wattage of R9 to dissipate any additional heat.

Jim

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R9 is one of the limitations to earlier sampling. If you want to kill 2 cats with 1 stone then raise the value of R9 to, say, 2.2k or maybe 3.3k. This will lower the power dissipation and speed up the diode clamp recovery. The trade-off is it also raises the thermal noise but the SL already runs pretty quiet so it may be acceptable. Unfortunately the SL sample delay is set by firmware so you would also need a solution for that.

 

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Many thanks, Carl. I'm not going to get into it that deep. I thought of raising the wattage of R9 because I've a read a complaint that it was getting hot with the raised battery voltage. I haven't seen it in mine, but thought it might start showing up if I went to 21 volts, as in a 5-cell pack.

Jim

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...
On 12/24/2021 at 9:42 PM, Jim in Idaho said:

Carl, I've run mine as high as 16.8 without problems, but now limit the voltage to 16.0, just to be safe.

But, I've been thinking of a 5 cell battery pack limited to 20v. Might have to raise the wattage of R9 to dissipate any additional heat.

Jim

Hi Jim. After reading about all these battery mods for the TDI SL, I dove in and created a 5 battery pack for my SL. It worked good with the miner john 8x12 (well it seemed too- I only did tests around the river bank near my house.) I charged the pack to about 19.8 volts or so. Heres where it gets interesting... When I switched to my "TDI Series" optimized Coiltek 14" coil it when hay-wire. False signals, threshold went nuts. Also the detector can detect only medium and up size targets now and the signal sound is delayed when you put a target to the coil. Something is zapped. No popping or smoke or burning smell and on inspection the board "looks"ok. I did some multimeter tests and R9 gave no reading in diode mode. I realize testing components that are parts of circuits on boards can give odd readings/no readings et so I'm not really convinced there as I'm a novice electronics person...  I'm gonna replace it and maybe the couple or so other "2512" sized thick film type resistors in that area of the board near the tx rx. Theres a 680 ohm, a 1k ohm, and a 1ohm. Can anyone let me know the wattages to use on these? Thanks! Also any advice is much appreciated and hopefully I can reciprocate. 

-Patrick

Whites battery 5 pack upgrade.jpg

Whites resistors tx-rx.jpg

whites tdi board whole.jpg

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