3m Breathe Easy Turbo battery conversion

REK Knives

REK Knives

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Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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Apr 3, 2011
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I know others have done this but haven't seen any threads here about it. The BP15 batteries are EXPENSIVE so this is pretty neat. I've recently upgraded to a TR-300+ unit but I want to upgrade my old Breathe Easy unit for my oldest son as he starts helping me in the shop.

What I found was that all the conversions operate at 5v output from the battery (most any battery bank will work), which translates to a good bit less CFM output over the factory 6.25v BP-15's. So I ordered a voltage converter off of Amazon (cheap) which will allow me to take a 12V pin output and step it down to 6.25V and it works perfect. I'll post updates here with exactly what I did as it comes together, just waiting on a few more things in the mail.

Anyway, here's a video of me comparing the CFM output of the BP-15 and a 5v Battery Bank.


Fixall Fixall
 
Thank you. I have a Breathe Easy in a box downstairs, along with two dead batteries.

I took the easy way out and bought a Versaflo, but I saved it, so...
 
You can use 8V or 9V battery packs fine. It is just a DC motor. You could use a 12V Li-ion power pack with multi-output and use the 6V or 9V port.
 
That's great news! I haven't seen any with a 6v output though, only 9v. 6v would be fine but I feel like these motors tend to burn up semi rapidly, I've went through probably 4 over the past 4 years. The 9v seems like it would cause the motor to work harder and burn out quicker, correct?
 
Awesome thread! Those Breathe Easy batteries are so insanely priced, but after using a PAPR system, there's really no going back.
 
john april said:
just curious, with the correct batteries you burn up one motor per year?
Click to expand...
Yes, using the bp15 3m batteries. Maybe even more than that. They develop this whine and then I trash them and switch to a new motor. I read somewhere the motors are rated for like 1000 hours
 
Video is up in post #2, works great. I'll try to add links of parts I got to the description in a bit
 
REK Knives said:
Yes, using the bp15 3m batteries. Maybe even more than that. They develop this whine and then I trash them and switch to a new motor. I read somewhere the motors are rated for like 1000 hours
Click to expand...

A normal work year, 40 hours per week is 2,020 hours per year.

Selling something like that with only one thousand hour life is pretty ignorant.

Have you ripped one apart and eyeballed if bearings are changeable ?
Or is the fan a sealed unit ?


Did you ID the source of the measuring tube device in the video ?
 
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What amperage output do you need ?
If it's within one or one and a half .A
and if you were happy with six volts vs six point two


there maybe larger current units too.

Simplify with a

One chip regulator
three pins
plus volts in, plus volts out, common negative.
feed it with the same twelve volt battery
just build this inside that battery, maybe give it some heat sink contact.

You eliminate having an extra box on your belt, you eliminate the extra connection, you eliminate the chance of blowing the unit because you hooked up the input to the output like you did before.

You eliminate parasitic loss from the readout
 
12345678910 said:
A normal work year, 40 hours per week is 2,020 hours per year.

Selling something like that with only one thousand hour life is pretty ignorant.

Have you ripped one apart and eyeballed if bearings are changeable ?
Or is the fan a sealed unit ?


Did you ID the source of the measuring tube device in the video ?
Click to expand...
Yeah I remember reading that but can't find the source reference so maybe I'm remembering wrong 🤷🏻‍♂️

I've disassembled as far as I could but it looks to be sealed.

The measuring devise is what comes with it and is made by 3m.
12345678910 said:
If you use different connector types for in and out it would be impossible to smoke because you hooked it up wrong.
Click to expand...
No, what I did was hooked up the battery to the output of the converter and it caused smoke haha.
12345678910 said:
What amperage output do you need ?
If it's within one or one and a half .A
and if you were happy with six volts vs six point two


there maybe larger current units too.

Simplify with a

One chip regulator
three pins
plus volts in, plus volts out, common negative.
feed it with the same twelve volt battery
just build this inside that battery, maybe give it some heat sink contact.

You eliminate having an extra box on your belt, you eliminate the extra connection, you eliminate the chance of blowing the unit because you hooked up the input to the output like you did before.

You eliminate parasitic loss from the readout
Click to expand...
That would be sweet but beyond my skill level!
 
Excellent video! Thanks for posting it Josh. I know you can get 6cfm out of a 5v battery, but I'll personally feel safer with the increased airflow that 6.25v gives. Especially since that is the voltage that 3M themselves are using now. Micarta and G10 is really nasty stuff.

I was going to try to go a different route because of the power banks I had on hand, but then I found a 6000mah battery bank my wife used to recharge her breast pump on the go and it just happens to have a 12v dc output, lol. I just ordered the rest of the stuff I don't already have. I'm going to use a slightly different housing for the buck converter, and then I plan on using 15lb Velcro tape to secure that to the Breathe Easy housing and then the battery will just go in my back pocket. Easy enough.

I have an 8000mah power bank for jumping vehicles that is a little under powered that I want to look into converting too. It might be a little trickier though... The output is a USB C with 9v @2amps and 5v @2.6amps. I have a feeling the unit will default to 5v @2.6amps, and I also have had some trouble sourcing a suitable cable.

The other things I want to mess around with are the standard 5v USB power banks. I have four 10,000mah power banks that are a nice small size that have 5v @2.4a output. They would be absolutely ideal for the Breathe Easy setup. I want to use a boost converter instead of a buck converter to step the voltage up from 5v to 6.25v. The problem I'm having is most (all) of the reasonably priced, small boost converters I've found take a minimum input voltage of 6v for some reason. I think I might have to make my own.

I did find some instructions for such a thing, but it just seems like so much work, lol.
 
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Don't let those big mAh numbers fool you. 10,000mAh is supposed to deliver 10 amps for an hour. I have tried to use a 12V/42,389mAh power pack to run a 3 amp LED circuit and it won't run much past an hour. Like shop vacuum cleaner motor HP, the numbers are sheer fancy.
 
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