I want to turn all my power tools and batteries a universal connector like USB-C. I have a 3d printerand skills so getting the manual interface is easy enough, but I don’t a lot about ports and tech. I’m learning fast, but I’m not quite there yet.
From what I understand, I’d need to put a female port on the battery which isn’t difficult and has been done plenty for charging.
I’d need to put a male plug on the tools to interface with it, and my initial research says I can’t just solder the power pins to the cables in the tool, I’ll need a circuit board that requests the 20v from the usb source? Is that doable? It looks like I can pick them up on AliExpress. But I need a qualified adult to verify that’s what I need to do.
From there, would I be able to cord them with this method or would I need to build a better usb charger port?
Is there a better port to use? Usb-C is nice and small so I can fit it in wherever I like, but can it handle tool use? Would it be better to do usb or something else?
As you mentioned, we can already see USB-C charged batteries for power tools out on the market without all the proprietary charging crap from other platforms. As an example, see Greenworks Pro 24v, 4 or 8 Ah and/or Hyper Tough brand
I also haven’t looked at all the specific bells and whistles, but Torque Test Channel on YT has a couple of videos opening them up and testing them, and they do have a circuit board inside the bidirectional charging batteries (either 21700 or 18650 cells), which charges at 65w, and the port also has a little silicone(?) flap to cover it when unused. Perhaps it might be useful as a reference for your trials
See below video “Even More Problems for Big Brands from Walmart”, around 30s mark as an example:
non YT link
YT link
For the adapter, perhaps you could use this open source terminal_v2 as a reference on the battery side? This one is for Ridgid batteries specifically, so you will need to fiddle with part A to adapt it to your brand battery connector. They used a Molex 44262 series connector on the contacts with the battery for reference.
On the other end, it has anderson connectors, but you could adapt it to xt## depending on your preferences/availability
If you don’t want to open/cut the tool itself, perhaps a dummy + xt/anderson connector on the tool side to connect into terminal_v2 on the batteries side?
Ridgid dummy example from the same author.
Disadvantage of dummies is that you would need one dummy for every brand you have to use
Above dummy also has a dangling cable. I’m not a designer, otherwise I would look into having the dummy with an xt## built into it, than have part B from terminal_v2 have the other xt## built into it, which slides/locks/connect into the dummy. I’m not sure if that was clear, sorry
The author also made a video showcasing the terminal_v2, dummies, and other features that might be useful, see “Build a battery adapter to power the whole Lab”, as it might help:
non YT link
YT link
If you want to go the OpenBox route shown in the video, this bushing might also be useful, discussed around 22m10s on the video above