Using the SX Electronics 60V/30A Buck Converter Step Down DC Regulator

ngant17

1 W
Joined
Jan 6, 2018
Messages
58
Location
Chuluota, Florida
This is my first project e-bike. I had an inexpensive and rusty Exitor Magna mountain bike, so it needed a lot of new parts. The bike was bought at a surplus auction a few years ago. Kept outside in hot, humid Florida weather for all that time.
https://tinyurl.com/bike-frame1

I needed to remove the rusty derailleur and cassette on the 24in. rear wheel. I wanted the simplicity of a single freewheel.

https://preview.tinyurl.com/bike-frame2

I have a number of 18v and 20v power tool batteries and a 60v electric lawnmower used in my landscaping business, so why not use my existing supply and swap them out as I need them? I’m pretty sure they have the own BMS with the separate chargers. I haven’t decided how to monitor discharge going into bike motor yet.

I’m focusing on low speed / high torque and want to avoid creating overvoltages on the Bafang motor. Not looking for cross-country biking with this setup.

I needed to find a DC-DC buck converter to drop my batteries from 60 volts down to a manageable 48v which is the level the Bafang motor is designed to run. Fortunately, I found on Aliexpress a good fit: a 60V/30A Buck Converter Step Down DC Regulator, by SX Electronics. Also from China, I ordered the Bafang BBS02 48v e-bike kit from CNE Bikes.

I removed the Bafang plastic cover plate and added more axle grease(Slick50 One brand) into secondary reduction gear, as recommended on electricbike-blog.com. Easy 5 minute job.

Now let the grinding begin! The bike had the old American type of bottom bracket, with a one piece crank.
https://tinyurl.com/bottom-bracket-shell1
Although it had the required 68mm width for the Bafang kit, I still needed an American-to-Euro bottom bracket adapter to conform to the diameter of the Bafang crankshaft. Unfortunately with this adapter, I still had to cut off a few millimeters on each side of the bottom bracket since the shoulders of the Euro adapter added a few extra millimeters onto the 68mm width on each side of the bracket shell. Also I had grind down the internal bracket threads so the Bafang crankshaft could slide on easier. Tools used: 120vac electric grinder with metal cut-off discs, Dremel high-speed rotary tool, with metal grinding discs, stones and coarse-grit sanding drums.

Remember the rule, class: the front chainwheel sprocket uses the lowest numbers of teeth for low gear, while meshing with a back (rear) sprocket which will have the highest number of teeth for low gear. High torque means front low T, back high T. High speed is just the reverse: front high T, back low T.

For comparison on the original Exitor Magna gearing, its lowest (first) gear used a 24T/28T front/back sprocket combination. As stated at beginning, I wanted higher RPMs and power on the e-bike rather than top speed, and especially since I have the older cantilever brakes, which means high speed will not be a priority on this e-bike. I’m not going any faster on the road than I can reasonably stop.

Second point. Here in my neck of the woods of Central Florida, my experience has shown that it’s easy to get bogged down when biking off-road, especially on certain trails when you run into sugar sand. You’re DOA in first gear, giving it all you got in pedal power (no electric motor for PAS). You end up walking your bike out of that patch. In my case, the electric power is not for riding uphill, there aren’t any mountains here to climb.

At this time, I am keeping the original 46T Bafang chainwheel. To go to even lower gear ratios, a 34T or 36T chainring will be installed in the near future. OTOH for a back sprocket, I screwed on a 20T Shimano SF-1200 single speed freewheel to replace the old cassette. So my fixed gear ratio is now 46T/20T front/back. That’s a low gear ratio but about 2.5x higher than the lowest gear on original cassette gearing. Enough to keep the Bafang electric motor spinning fast, and giving me a reasonable compromise for street-pedaling a fixie on 24in tires.

Finally a compatible chain for single speed gears is needed: a KMC Z410 chain 1/2” x 1/8” for single-speeds or internal gear hubs meshes with the teeth on the Shimano single freewheel. The normal 1/2” x 1/8” chain didn’t mesh correctly with this freewheel.

Theoretically, I should be able to use this gear ratio, given enough PAS to run through any of those notorious patches of off-road Florida sugar sand. Or will additional tweaking of controller software and/or going for lower gears be the order of the day? It remains to be seen. Stayed tuned on this thread.
 
I'll be tossing out the 18v-20v power tool batteries as I now understand the watt-hours rating of batteries. Pretty pathetic, 40 watt/hours at best.

Initially the little batteries did give me an immediate boost on PAS 9 but they quickly wimped out after a few minutes of riding. At least it was good for turning on the system and getting into the hidden menu (press "+/-" together, do this two times, then enter access code is "0512").

The 60v mower battery may have the best current potential, rating at 240 watt/hours. Will have to wait for buck converter before connecting to Bafang system.

Will have to save money for a real e-bike battery in future.
 
Just swapped out drill motor batteries for the 60v Greenworks Pro lawnmower battery. Now it's a real powerhouse, and even with the watt-hours which are less than 1/3 of the Bafang BBS02 rating of 750watts. Being about 125% over-voltaged, the PAS at level 1 is sufficient and it would be unwise to push it up to level 9 on the street with this much juice flowing through the motor.

The lithium-ion Greenworks 60v battery is 4 amp-hours, and costs about $179 locally, ebay even cheaper. I typically can run my mower for 30mins. on a full charge, not as much as the specs are saying (60mins). It has internal BMS, I often hear it automatically go into boost mode when mower is under a load. I've used it on a mower for about 6 months and it still keeps a good charge.

For the price, I haven't found anything in 60v and at least 4.0AH that is very close. For example, the common Dewalt FlexVolt 60v/20v battery is sold as 6.0AH but that's only at 20v. If you switch it over to 60v, it drops down to 2.5AH.

Too fast for the brakes I have. Will be upgrading all brake components ASAP. And trying to keep lower gear ratio for power instead of speed.
 
Using the 60v, 4.0 amp-hour Greenworks battery, I maxed out at 35kph/21mph on street today, level 9 on PAS. When the air is blasting you in the face at that speed, it's the wake-up call you need, to be sure your bike's lighting and brake system are at its highest potential. It's basically a war-zone out there, and you're going to be on the front-line as road kill if you don't start riding smart and as safe as possible, regardless of the kind of bike you're riding.

A fully charged (61.9v) Greenworks battery will not run the Bafang, the display will go into shut-down mode. It will run normal at 61.5. Without the 60v-48v buck converter, a fully-charged Greenworks 60v battery can be used if you let the mower run down the battery for 5-10mins so it loses 1/2 volt or slightly in that range.. These voltages haven't burned up the Bafang electronics yet, but I wouldn't go past that threshold.

I plan to test how many miles I can get on a single Greenworks battery until it will run down. It goes dead on the bike at 43v, long after it would cease to run on my 60v mower. 2 of these 60v, 4.0 amp-hour batteries may be the best way to run the Bafang.

I need a lower gear with no PAS, probably going down to a 32T or 30T chainwheel with an adapter for the stock Bafang drive unit. That ought to reduce top speed but increase acceleration.

Some lawnmower batteries are running up to 80 volts these days, so a bigger buck converter would be the better choice.

You can spend twice the money for an e-bike battery, or build one yourself and spend a few hours of labor in a workshop instead of riding the bike itself. I am thinking the 60v mower batteries are a reasonable compromise. Even better if you already have an electric lawnmower.
 
The ever-helpful sales associate Wendy Wu at http://cnebikes.en.made-in-china.com/ CNE Bikes, where I got the Bafang set, is informing me:

"52v is max for 48v 750w or 48v 1000w motor engine .why do you use a 60v ? it is really not good for motor and controller .controller will be broken if you use 60v for long time .

we don't suggest you choose 60v battery for 48v engine . voltage is too big .

thank you
Wendy
cnebikes

This remains to be seen. I got about 50km on bike so far. IMHO she is being the conservative vendor or over-reacting to the overvoltages at 61.5v on my Bafang e-bike. It is a rugged, well-made system and I have faith that the Bafang can handle the extremes. Beside, 4.0Ah is a puny current flow on 60v, compared to the regular 48v batteries out there.
 
Initial long-haul test of the bike: I seem to have a max. range of ~15km/9 miles using (2) 60v 4Ah batteries. One of the batteries did not have a full 60v charge. This trip was 75% on an off-road trail and about 25% on roads to/from the trail. PAS was used most of time, since my single-speed gear ratio isn't low enough for easy pedal-only mode.

Electricbikeblog:" "...a setup in which the battery capacity in watt hrs is equal to the motor capacity in watts. This kind of setup will have the greatest range because the motor will not over-tax the battery...battery capacity is usually measured in Watt-hrs. Watt-hrs = amp-hrs x volts…"

Luna Cycle states “20 watt-hours per mile” is standard. Or 12.5 watt-hours/kilometer.

I have (2) 60v x 4Ah = 480 watt/hrs. Less than the ideal 750 watt-hours. Also they are not in parallel and are swapped out when the first one is dead. I should have been able to go 24 miles by that rule, connecting in parallel may have increased range, not sure of that yet.

Granted, my current set-up pales in comparison to Luna Cycle's 60v Triangle 20-24ah Panasonic PF battery. Not ready to drop down $649.95 to get 1200 watt/hours. About $2/watt-hour.

Cheapest price for (2) Greenworks 60v 4Ah batteries are approx. $200, although I paid more with purchase of lawnmower with battery. In this case, theoretically that’s $2.40/watt-hour. A little less cost-effective.

OTOH I can run a business with electric mower to cover the cost of some of that e-bike juice. I don’t know of any e-bike batteries that are also plug ‘n play for lawnmowers and weedeaters.

My biggest problem is the (2) 60v batteries bounce a little when running on the off-road trails. Need to secure them down more. Finally, there appears to be a slight drag in pedaling, mostly from motor when it is idle and out of juice. Planning to swap out for a 30T chainring in front and 22T freewheel in back. That's the lowest ratio I can find with Bafang 104BCD chainring adapter.
 
Managed to go 15km this time, with power left to go on second battery. Stayed away from off-road terrain, kept to hard paved surfaces and ran only in PAS1, which meant 12-13kph max speed and pedaling slow, not really optimum with a fixed, single-speed granny gear (46T/20T).

You don't really want this gear ratio when the batteries go dead and you are on your own with the pedals. When the Bafang motor is off-line, it has a slight but noticeable drag that makes an extra effort to keep the wheels moving.
 
I tossed out the original SX Electronics 60V buck converter as it appears to have been defective.

Replaced and the new kid on my electronics block is a DROK 75V 12A 720W DC-DC Adjustable Buck Step Down Converter. Very happy with this component. Voltage Out and Amperage is adjustable, although instructions to get into menu are somewhat vague and imprecise. Appears to be a better quality product. Available on Amazon.

With +62v on a fully-charged Greenworks mower battery, I dialed it back to a comfortable 52v output. Amperage not sure how to set yet. However, on the bike rack at PAS9, I can get 35kph and amperage output shows 1.3amps more or less. On the road, a different story. At 52V output, speed will max out at 20kph with PAS9, and it's not possible to read amperage output as the DROK buck converter sits in rack on back where battery is located.

I will have to do more adjustments to see if I'm not fully utilizing the setting for amperage output. OTOH the DROK buck converter doesn't seem to get hot as far as I can tell.

I'm not sure what I'm limited to in amperage output, with the 4.0Ah 60V battery. More testing of components planned soon.
 
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