New motorcycle heated vest/jacket/shirt
I live in Minnesota and decided I needed a way to extend my motorcycle season. I looked at many different heated jackets and they were all more then I wanted to pay and bulkier then I wanted. My original vest I made worked well the first season. I modified the heating elements durring the second season and attached them to a zip-up vest to make it easier to put on and much better athsteticly. But this year I wanted something better. First I wanted it to be more flexable, the teflon tape I was using was much too rigid. Secondly I wanted more then a vest, I wanted it to keep my arms warm too. But most of all, I wanted to be able to better control the heat.
I disected a broken heated seat coushin to see how they were built. If they could withstand years of people sitting on them, I figured the same design would last quite long in a jacket. It used 24 gauge wire for the heating elements, glued between fabric. The elements were also stiched into place. So I bought a walfle net shirt and started to sew my wire into place. I made sure the wire was rated for high temps to make sure nothing would melt or start on fire. I concentrated most of the wire on the front half of the shirt. Because your front is more exposed to the wind, it loses heat easier. I put some on the back, and some on the arms. I aimed for about a 100 watts at full power and ended up actually hitting about 8 amps at 14.4 volts so I ended up at about 115 watts. This may sound excessive but I planned to be able to adjust the power to be able to dial in my perfered level of heat. On that note, I looked at buying a controller from one of the jacket suppliers but found them anywere from $50 to $100. Instead I bought a motor speed controller rated for up to 15 amps at full duty cycle. It was the CKMX033 from electronickits.com This is basically a microcontroller with its PWM output driving a big transistor. I tested it and was able to vary the current anywhere from 0.5A to 8A which is the maximum the vest will pull at this voltage. The PWM controller was a little bulky to place on the handle bars so I removed the pot off the board and reconected it with with wires long enough to get from the handlebars back to near the battery. I also ran two 10 gauge wires for the power up to the handlebars for the power switch. One last wire was needed to ground the switch for the light. All of these were bundled together and ziptied to the frame. I made sure to leave enough slack to be bale to turn handlebars. The switch and pot were put into a project box and a bracket was hammered out of sheetmetal to bolt onto the handlebars. The controller is also in a project box and set back next to the battery in an accessory pocket on the bike. I may need to put vents into the project box if it starts to heat up too much, but so far it hasn't been an issue. | 
|
No comments:
Post a Comment