After getting a fair few of the case components printed out, I built the central portion up and set to soldering up the rat's nest of a wiring harness. Narrowing down where everything fits and what's required to keep it there is a bit challenging in a case this small, and I definitely wish I were more confident in my ability to design a PCB to reduce the sheer wire mass and mess in here.
In any case, the features in this version are crystalizing nicely. We have a QC3 fast charge board charging the 37wh battery, as well as providing power output. Input will come either from a USB C input, or via a 6-36v buck converter. In either case, max power input is 20 watts, not half bad. There will also be ad direct 3.7v port on the exterior, allowing me to use an RC battery charger to push up to 40 watts, much better than the usual 10w you'd get via USB.
Power supply to the rest of the device will be via two 2A 5V boost converters that are separate from the main charge board. I've found that if you use one of these QC3 boards to output 5v, it limits the input to 5v as well, potentially reducing charging speed if the device is running. By separating the power supply and charge controller boards, I can get full-speed charging all of the time, regardless of load voltage.
While I've yet to print out any of the modules, having the frame...pretty much together has let me test a mockup of the dovetail system and it seems very robust! Tolerances also seem quite adequate.
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