Universal battery cradles for charging and testing small batteries

[PTR_1275]

Hi everyone,

I’ve recently been needing to charge or test small batteries with flat contacts (like small camera batteries) and I’m needing a easy and small solution to having adjustable probes that I can move into place and it will hold the probes onto the contact pads. This is not for coin cells or cylinder cells.

I’ve looked at the Cadex rigid arm several times over the years and while it is the perfect size and construction, they’re damn expensive and I can’t justify that price for them.

I could make my own with the flexible coolant hose style connectors and some pogo pins, but I’m not sure how well that would work and by the time you get a decent bend radius it is going to be pretty big.

Has any one built their own, bought an off the shelf one or using the Cadex one?

I’d like to hear the good, the bad and the ugly

Cheers

[JohnnyMalaria]

Helping hands?

[SeanB]

Go to the local China mall and look for a universal cellphone battery charger. Those, while having the most dodgy of SMPS units inside, often with non existent mains isolation, do at least give you the adjustable fingers and mounting to hold most flat battery packs in place and make contact with the connctions. Remove the junky inner converter and add your own external one with better charge control, or use the included and use a " do not touch while plugged in" approach for it.