Mac Portable battery charger tray

  • It's #MARCHintosh 2025! Join in on the fun and post your project or play with some new stuff in our #MARCHintosh 2025 thread.

moldy

New Tinkerer
Aug 1, 2022
13
24
3
I happen to own three Macintosh Portables and I was looking for a way to charge their batteries every now and then, without unpacking the computers from their safe storage. In short, I needed an external charger for Mac Portable batteries.

Today, I would like to share my design of a 3d-printed tray that can hold the battery and uses pogo pins to make reliable contact with the battery contacts. The design more or less resembles the original Apple charger that sometimes shows up online for pretty high prices.

MacPortableCharger v38 small.png


On my website (click here), you can find the STL file to print the tray + the reference for the pogo pins, which can be ordered from Aliexpress (I haven’t found a Digikey/Mouser cross-reference for similar ones).

IMG_1478 small.png


To keep the charging process safe and automated, I’m using an RC battery charger that can handle a 3-cell lead battery. Works great!

charging.png


I hope this might came useful to someone looking for a way to conveniently charge and store Portable batteries :)
 
Last edited:

MeTheMac

New Tinkerer
Feb 20, 2025
13
2
3
Hi, I can't seem to access your website. Great work on this, would love to make one! Also, what charger did you use? Would it work with rebuilt batteries? Thank you so much for documenting this!
 

moldy

New Tinkerer
Aug 1, 2022
13
24
3
Hi, I can't seem to access your website. Great work on this, would love to make one! Also, what charger did you use? Would it work with rebuilt batteries? Thank you so much for documenting this!
Oops, the URLs of my website changed, the original post is updated now and should work