Battery Connector Color

[TimTheGreat]

Our team's charging station is built on a library cart, with the charger on top, and the batteries down below. It charges 8 at a time, and the wiring gets hard to follow. To make it easier to identify which battery is which, I want to put different color Anderson SB50 connectors on. But the colors are not compatible with one another. This means that we would need a bridge between the battery and the robot that changed colors. I don't want to do this because there is a higher chance of a bad connection, so my idea was during competition, we would change the connector on the robot to match the battery color. Have any other teams experimented with this?

[Foster]

Why not wrap the connector in different colored tape? Or paint them all white and put big numbers on them?

[Tem1514 Mentor]

A simple solution is to use a different color of electrical tape that is attached to the charger in a visible location and then the same color of electrical tape on the Anderson connector of that changer. Really simple, just follow the color trail.

[MrBasse]

We ordered a dozen red SB-50s and received a dozen grey ones. When we went to plug them in they didn't fit. We just milled down the connector where there was interference and red plugs into grey just fine now. The contacts are what holds them together anyway. I'm not positive about other colors, but contact position should be the same on all of them. You can see our setup here.

Otherwise, what about organizing your wiring a little better so it is easier to trace? Or labeling your ports on the charger and then labeling you battery positions? In the above linked picture, we had a hard time figuring out how we wanted to organize things, but ended up with a visual layout. The batteries are arranged top to bottom by number and on the charger they go from the middle to the out side by position. You can see how 9 and 10 are not lit up on the charger because they aren't in the cart. If we unplugged battery 1 on the bottom left it would turn the light off on the far left side of the charger.

[TimTheGreat]

We have electrical tape on them now, and it looks god awful, it peels off, and we don't have 8 different colors. However, we DO have 8 different-colored connectors, and nothing else to do with them. The main reason I want to change the battery color is so they don't go to waste. What about other ideas about what to do with them?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

We have electrical tape on them now, and it looks god awful, it peels off, and we don't have 8 different colors.

If you just put a small piece of electrical tape on a plastic connector, it is likely to peel off. But if you use the tape as it is designed, wrapping all the way around so that it is stuck to itself, it will stay on for a very very long time.

We also don't have 8 different colors of electrical tape. However, we do have a color printer, and we have nice strong clear tape. Our chargers' connectors are labeled with well-taped paper numbers and colors, with matching paper color collars on the wire and matching numbers and colors on the chargers.

[Chadfrom308]

Color heatshrink. Cheap from online, it makes a good, protected connection, and it is good protection. Just put it on before the connector, where the wire goes into the connector. That way its right by the connector so if it ever becomes unplugged, it can easily be recognised as to what motor or whatever it goes to.

[TimTheGreat]

Originally Posted by MrBasse

We just milled down the connector where there was interference and red plugs into grey just fine now.

Do you have a picture of what the connector looks like now that it is milled?

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

Do you have a picture of what the connector looks like now that it is milled?

I'll have to take one when I can get back down to the shop. But just imagine the part the arrow points to in this picture cut down 1/8".

And no that isn't my picture, I borrowed it from google. We haven't managed to fry an SB-50 yet.

[AdamHeard]

I interpret the rules to say that the connector has to be that PN, which means red only.

So all the batteries and the robot itself must have a red connector. My as well then use red on the charger as well, and label/color via some other method.

[TimTheGreat]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

I interpret the rules to say that the connector has to be that PN, which means red only.

Which rule is that?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

Which rule is that?

R35 in 2014 calls out "SB50". I could be mistaken, but I believe only the red has SB50 as the PN, and the other colors have another letter at the end to denote color (EX, SB50G).

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

R35 in 2014 calls out "SB50". I could be mistaken, but I believe only the red has SB50 as the PN, and the other colors have another letter at the end to denote color (EX, SB50G).

My understanding was that SB50 was a designation that means "SB series, 50 A rating", and that to specify a housing colour, handle, panel mount, contact style, etc., you needed to refer to the SB50 catalogue pages where all those options would be listed individually (under various part numbers, none of them SB50).

For marking these, paint markers and/or vibratory engravers work well (the marking needs to be in a recess, or it may eventually rub off). (Edit: Watch out for the solvents in the paint marker. Don't use acetone on polycarbonate, from which the SB connectors are made.)

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Anderson designed these to only mate like colors. This insures that applications can use the same tooling while preventing mis-mating of different circuits.
The 3M color wheel that we use for identifying wire on the robot, also works very well for the multiple station chargers. The color wheel is available from Digikey, although the $30 cost can be tough to budget for.

[Billfred]

Another thought if you need multiple colors: color combinations. Assuming your hardware store is like mine, you can probably get red, black, white, yellow, green, and blue. So if you have eight chargers, you can do the six plus, say, blue and white and black and yellow. As long as you don't have a yellow and black in that mix, you should be fine.