Lithium Battery Management

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April 24, 2013

You may have seen my recent blogs on Lithium batteries. When it comes to Lithium batteries, the most important design aspect (and also the most frequently overlooked) is battery management. Lithiums, like other rechargeable chemistries, require some intelligence while charging. Unlike other chemistries, they are much less forgiving to improper…

Connecting Lithium Batteries

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April 22, 2013

You may have seen my recent blog on Connecting EV Batteries. This generated a lot of interest, particularly in what was not covered- what about connecting smaller Lithium batteries? In the EV world, Lithium batteries (specifically, individual cells) are rather large, hulking items that require large connectors both for mechanical…

The Mechanical Nature of Connectors

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April 17, 2013

A few months ago, one of my daughters broke her arm (badly) when she fell off of a neighbor’s playset. As you may guess, my wife and I spent a fair amount of time in and out of the hospital, waiting for various reasons (x-ray, doctors, surgery, etc.). My daughter…

Don’t Forget About System Efficiency

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April 4, 2013

As engineers, we can be obsessed with solving problems. If a circuit doesn’t work right, we debug it to find the root cause. If a component fails, we look for the root cause to prevent future failures. If you are given a specific improvement to make in a product, you…