Same guy sells them The electric blue is quite nice
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$10 for 540ā¦ thatās a pretty good deal
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from my stillāin days I can;t get enough copper 
Speaking of nickel strips, what is the rated Amps for a 10mm wide by .15 thickness strip? Iāve seen so many different values that I donāt know what to trust.
One formula Iāve seen is Surface Area * 19 / 4. For the above strip that is 100.1519/4 = 7.1A only. Yet Iāve seen sellers claiming 40A on 12mm by 0.15mm pure nickel.
I bought these: ThreeBulls 200Pcs Cardboard 18650 Battery Insulators Electrical Insulating Adhesive Paper (Red 100Pcs + green 100Pcs) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074P6FNSK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_agIxaPRkzOIKT
Is good, snug fit. Tape off the end you trim 1st, otherwise the roll will unravel. You can use KAPTON or regular tape, it didnāt really matter for me. I also wrapped KAPTON tape around the outside prior to the nickel strips being installed as the pack will have some flex with just the tubes being hot glued, after you attach the ni strips, after that the pack will stiffen up really well.
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The 10mm wide/ 0.20mm thick roll from the alibaba seller i found on endlessphere came in today. . I tried to weld a small piece, but the 709 just cant handle it, too thick :(. If anyone wants to buy the roll I can get it out for about $70-75 shipped to the US depending where youāre at. PM me if youāre interested.
If that works, iāll be a very happy camper. Especially if i can use the wand from my 709a on it with a little modification.
The only downside to using spacers other than having to buy spacers is that you canāt build as dense of a unit as you can without them. The upsides are good though. Better ventilation, additional structural strength, easier balance lead management, iām sure i could think of more.
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iām ordering about 600 cells from them in a few weeks. Iāll grab some of their nickel while iām at it and see how it fares.
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Thatās a 709a in that pic. I have one in my drawer. It wonāt weld anything nearly as thick as 15mil strip with the wand for me. Whatās the thickness you are using there? Iām about to boost the crap out of that thing so i can use the wand. Somebody gave me some settings to try but it still wonāt penetrate my strips for a solid weld like the 788H does. It does a great job on the tiny little balance tabs, but i donāt use those.
I dont really understand why the pro battery makers (like you @longhairedboy) are still using nickel strips. I know they have proved to work but adding 3-4 layers of them takes way too much time if you do it as your daily job.
I did a quick search on the web and smart alternatives exist. For example:
Something like this has the following benefits:
- cell level fuse (maybe @chaka you could be interested too 2)same power capability of 5!!! nickel strips (remember copper is about 4x conductive than nichel)
- reduced assembly time (as you were just welding 1 strip) 4)super cheap (the listing says about 55yuan/8ā¬ for the one you see in the pics) 5)vibration wont damage the weld (not severely) because of the elastic link
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Does it come in single stack configs?
They say at quantity 200 it is custom made according to your design. This could be kinda revolutionary for pro makers.
If you want I can ask them if they have in stock some standard shapes.
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Does it have to be 200 of the same or could it be 2-3 designs?
Probably just 1 design. Anyways for flat batteries applications I would order a configuration with the height of 1 cell and lenght of 12. This would be ok to build packs up to 6p.
Yeah that would work, could be cut, stacked etc Iām down for 200 1x12
A few reasons, for me anyway.
- strips allow literally any cell layout you can imagine and donāt restrict you to particular stacking patterns. Iām still in the agile phase on most of my processes so this matters a great deal.
- Iām designing a stamp shape for my 5P trapezoidal stacking pattern that will drastically reduce battery pack time already, so iām kind of ahead of you on that one.
- custom stamps require tooling costs and bulk orders. Money.
- Iām famous, not rich, so dev time for shit like this is longer because i always have to hustle and flip other shit just to what i really want. I canāt shit money like @onloop does, just not that skilled. Yet.
- I canāt weld copper. Yet. But when i can, i will be switching from nickel to copper. More shit flipping to get my welder modded.
- time is something i donāt have a lot of so sourcing things takes longer in general. ITs hard to google when tiny blonde vikings are demanding burritos and cheese.
- damping vibration on the whole pack and using a damping agent between cells while providing redundant parallel pathways between cells in each p group also works well.
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A lot of good reasons. I hope the copper-nichel strips will become more available so that battery makers will save some time.
I just got SUNKKO 709A and tried it for the first time. Whatās odd is I ordered .15mm strip from 2 different vendors who said it was pure nickel, but one was clearly thicker or stiffer than the other. Both of them, though, wonāt weld to the battery unless I am using a power of 7 and pulse of 6. My documentation says, too, 4-5 with a pulse of 2 (default), but that doesnāt do anything.
Do you find their suggestions to be inaccurate as well?