12V Battery Charging System
The project is about the design of a 12V battery charging system that is light, compact, and portable. In this project, we are going to come up with an electrical circuit that will be used in the charging of the 12V battery. The schematic will have voltage and current monitoring measures to ensure that we have a perfect system that can tell the user what is the level of the charging voltage and currents.
Supplies
The Circuit
Our system circuit is based on the MC78L12-SO8 IC which is a product manufactured by Freescale. This IC is just a 7812 IC with the ability to offer an output of 3A. The transformer T1 does the voltage step-down function while the diodes D1 and D2 execute the rectification purpose. Capacitor C1 is a filter while C2 is a decoupling capacitor. Diode D3, D4, and D5 lift the grounding of IC U1 to 2.1 volts and this makes the U1 IC output to be 14.1V which is 12V + 2.1V. We have introduced diode D6 to protect the reverse flow of the current from the battery when the mains are not available. MES1 shows the charging current while MES2 shows the charging voltage.
3D Output
The Circuit above can be drawn using KiCAD EDA. The circuit can also be converted to a 3D view using the same KiCAD. This will involve routing. The final product is attached below where the upper side is all other components and the lower side is the transformer.
Assembling of the Product
I ordered the product assembly through PCBway. The assembly process in PCBway is the best for many clients as they consider your satisfaction their priority.
It has three options as displayed in the Get Assembly quote
- Turnkey; Here PCBway will supply all the assembly parts for your product.
- Kitted or consigned; this category is where the customer supplies all the product components.
- Combo; In this PCBway supplies some parts as the client supplies others.