I picked up an XPAL Power XP18000 from Woot.com to use when I travel which seems a bit more frequent lately. I knew that they couldn’t provide a tip for the MacBook Pro as the MagSafe connector is patented and doesn’t appear to have been licensed from Apple. They acknowledge this fact and have indicated that they’re working with Apple on it. Considering that the MagSafe connector has been out for about 3.5 years, I’m not holding my breath.
On my last trip I used a battery from BatteryGeek that I borrowed from work. The MagSafe connector is definitely not Apple quality, but it worked, so I thought that if they could hack together a cable, why couldn’t I?
I found some MagSafe cables off broken power adapters and will use those when I get them, but in the meantime, I wanted a solution. I read a lot of tips online and found one that said to use a circuit lighter adapter socket connected to the battery and then use a MagSafe airline adapter plugged into the socket. Well, I happened to already have the socket and the MagSafe airline adapter, so I was almost there. In a stroke of genius when I was trying to sleep, I remembered that I had a bunch of circuit boards in the garage slated to get trashed (by law, I have to dispose of them as hazardous waste which I haven’t gotten around to doing, so they sit in a metal bucket). Some of the circuit boards had power connectors on it. I took a power connector off one of the boards, soldered it to the circuit lighter adapter and presto, I had a connector. A little electrical tape and it looks pretty good. There is a bunch of extra cable and a few twists and turns, but it works. Once I get the MagSafe cables, I’m going to hop down to Fry’s (the store that has what I need, but I dread having to go there), get some connectors and give it another try.
While I hope that XPAL Power manages to get a licensed MagSafe tip, I have a solution in the meantime. My next trip is in about 1.5 weeks and I’ll give it a try.
Hi,
I Just wanted to add to your article by saying that I am successfully using my XPAL 18000 to charge my macbook simply by using a magsafe cord cut from a bad power adapter. I used the blue 16-20v charging cable that came with the Xpal, cut off the end where the tips attach and spliced the magsafe cable right onto the charging cable. The red (+) and black (-) insulated strands of the xpal cable connect to the white center insulated (+) and exposed outside (-) strands on the magsafe cable. It’s pretty easy and only took some wire strippers and electrical tape. Works great, the LED on the magsafe connector even changes color appropriately.
Just used same method with my XP8000 and Macbook Pro. Fry’s sells “double walled” adhesive lined heat shrink tubing. It’s heat shrink tubing basically lined with hot glue. So if you solder the wires nicely, heat shrink them, then adhesive heat shrink the whole thing with one long larger diameter tube you can end up with something that’s extremely robust.
Also, this same heat shrink tubing works well to at least double the strength of the “strain relief” at the MagSafe plug when slid up and over the outer diameter butted up against the plug.
And since you’ve got your wire cut if you’re doing this mod, now is the time to put the heat shrink tubing onto it to make this possible.
You can’t fit heat shrink tubing small enough over an intact cable, so noone ever suggests it as a method to improve cable life but trust me it works!