I recently bought 150 TP4056 charge and protection boards to make a bunch more Eco-Charge power banks. Once I received them, I noticed that the ICs they were using were another type of TP4056 clone that I had not seen before – the TC4056. I had previously used and tested 4056E chips without issue, but I wanted to test these as well just to make sure.
My giant 18650 testing station is ideal for testing, because it has slots that perfectly fit the voltage and datalogger that I made earlier. The problem is that all the chips on it are of the 4056E variety, so I got my hot air rework station and went to work. I first practiced on a few of the boards that I had destroyed, so that I could get a hang of desoldering ICs with a connection on the bottom of them as well. Once I got the hang of it (it takes longer to melt the solder than on small passive components), I removed the 4056E from one of the board currently in the testing station, and replaced it with a TC4056 from one of the new boards.
After letting it cool down, I plugged in the datalogger and charged up a cell. The graph can be seen below, and is perfectly acceptable for charging 18650s. Like the 4056E chips, this one got quite warm as well, so I left the small heatsink on it as I had done with all the 4056Es in my testing station.
Project By: Micah Black
Written By: Micah Black