I’m attempting to add some extra backup generator charging rate capacity to my off-grid system. I already have two big Victron inverter-chargers and don’t really need more inverter capacity most of the time - except maybe as redundancy. My budget is a bit tight to justify getting that kind of hardware right now too.
Instead I picked up a pair of Emerson/Vertiv R24-3000 telecom power supplies for about a 1/10th the cost per kW of power output. They support CC/CV operation and are controllable via CAN bus so I’m pretty sure I can make them work from an electrical/software perspective.
The problem I’m facing though is a mechanical connectivity one. Both the input and output connectors are pretty unusual and not ones I can seem to get on Mouser/DigiKey/McMaster-Carr/etc. (At least not with my search skills.)
The input connector at least can be found on Alibaba here.
The pins I care about are the two I’ve colored red and black which are DC output @ 28.5v & 120A along with the two smallest pins which are the CAN bus pins.
Folks here seem to have a wide knowledge base so I figured I’d ask. Does anyone here have a recommendation for how I can solve the physical connectivity issue?
In order of my preference:
Source the matching connector from a standard supply house
Are my searching skills just not up to snuff? What key terminology am I missing?
Improvise/fabricate/cast a suitable one myself
3D printed: Material? Contacts? “3D printing as a service” recommendations?
Cast: Resin? Thermoplastic?
Something else?
Unsolder/Replace the connector with a more ubiquitous one
I’d prefer to be able to replace units with unmodified ones if I have a failure, but this is a decent fallback strategy.
Yeah, this might work. The data pins would obviously be trivial. I should break out some calipers and see what the diameters of those big power pins are. Seems like a similar problem in terms of being difficult to search for connectors by their physical specifications - beyond number of pins and rated voltage/amperage.
Fortunately, I should be able to safely test whatever solution I do come up with by incrementally ramping up the current limit while connected to a sufficiently large load and monitoring the connector temperature with a thermal camera.
I thought of this, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much on Ebay in that regard. The system that the supply units slide into is a big rack-style chassis so it probably isn’t very economical to ship them (especially broken) - and I haven’t been able to identify a “backplane board” model number of anything I could search for. The larger system is called a “Netsure 710”.
I already tried this without success
Yeah, it’s looking like it might come down to that…
I remember where I’ve seen connectors like that - on the back end of hot swap power supplies.
No idea if that will help track it down. I think replacing it is the way to go, or talk to whomever you ordered them from (they might just normally scrap the chassis).
“SCED” is a shenzhen company, so is unlikely to be carried by US parts houses. Ditto for “Jonhon”
Given the odd combination of pins, The output is likely a custom connector. The closest match I can find is the Jonhon “CZ35 Series” - PDF.js viewer where the large pins at least seem to (visually) match. However, the CZ35 series pins are 5mm diameter, rated for 75A, which does not match.
I’d also vote for removing the connector, replacing it with a custom wiring harness with several different but standard connectors. i.e. JST for the CAN pins, Anderson for the power, etc.
Also, sometimes you can convince ebay sellers to further disassemble the thing and just ship you part of it for a lower cost. I did this recently for someone who didn’t want 2/3rds of the weight of an item. (i.e. 35 → 10 lbs ship weight). shrug, I can resell the parts they didn’t want!
Of course if you DO replace the connector it has to be with the most obscure thing you can still find. Something from an early electric trolley, perhaps.
