my 17th month old loves that stereo more than anything. “WHAT?! It plays music AND has SIX BOOBS?! AND BUTTONS!” its like everything he’s interested in at all right now in one functional art installation.
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that battery pack is so fuckin sick bro! Mad props
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thanks man! its the first one i’ve ever built, so i went nuts triple checking everything making sure all the tacks were good and the solder points were good and all of that. IT turned out really well and i’m hoping to be able to test it out this weekend. I have some VESCs waiting at the post office and i’m picking them up today.
By far the sickest build thread going right now!
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I totally agree. This beast is going to rip it up!!
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I should read around here more often - these forums here are much better organized compared to ES and I like the user name tags - was seeing mine pop up in my user profile, pretty cool! 
anyway, about that serial connection thing: yes, the resistance of a connection scales linearly with its length, but the outer serial connections are quite long connections. I think its not very consequent to use for example 10AWG main battery connections with 5mm bullet connectors and single 8mm serial nickel strips that are supposed to carry all the current the battery has to deliver. remember: every serial connection carries the same total current, so youll always have “amount of serial connections” times your losses!
when I used the copper reinforcements on my 10S4P and 10S6P batteries, they were made to carry the exact same currents all the other elements of the chain have to carry. didnt want to have a bottle neck at the source already. in the end, too small internal battery connections will lead to unnecessary heat and heat means you wasted energy that couldve been used for your motor.
interesting test might be: use one of those 8mm nickel strips of about 10cm length between your battery and your VESC, then go to 60A+ load and see what happens to the strip (not asking to provoke, Im really asking cause I dont know how the strip will take it)! joule heating is proportional to the resistance of the strip and to the squared current. sadly I dont have nickel strips around right now, otherwise I wouldve measured the resistance to get an idea of the voltage you loose (U = R*I, with I = 60A and R the measured resistance, you know what voltage you lose on the strip. and you loose it on every of the 11 serial connections, so take the measured resistance * 11!). at the same time you can calculate your average losses with I^2 * R * t!
maybe its just insignificant, maybe it becomes more significant under heat, maybe its heating up to unhealthy amounts, who knows - in any way it would be interesting to know. 
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This is why i went ahead and doubled my nickel strips. I’m not sure what it would do either, so i doubled it up.
Finished the deck this weekend, so here’s the pictorial.
Hand brushed some red stain into the wire channels after cleaning them up:
found a 17/64th drill bit at lowes… LOL didn’t think they’d have one. Anyway, that lets me tap in the bullets for a super tight fit instead of having to epoxy them and watch them get crooked when the solder heats up the epoxy:
added in the wiring and glued down the wires with some epoxy and some clamps:
After filling it in with some of that wonderful West System 105/207, letting it harden for about 18 hours, and then sanding it down, i began the detail staining around the channels, careful not to get it on the epoxy:
The staining turned out well, nice and flat like i like it:
I like the stain flat because once the grip is on and locked in with urethane, it really makes the board POP:
These pics don’t do it justice. Even with the video its hard to take it all in. The clear urethane and the clear glass grit on top of the clear wiring channels and flat red backed gloss black logo… i’m really happy with it.
I’m starting on the boxes this week, then on to tuning the vescs and getting everything running and tested. I’m seriously earning this guy’s money, so my prices might have to go up soon. Just the consumables on this build were more than expected, nevermind the time. I was having too much fun doing it to keep exact track of my hours, but i’m probably over 20 hours into it so far. I’ll get faster and better at it though, so i try to keep that in mind. I’m essentially building prototypes still, despite having the Scarlet framework to work within, so every time the process will shift a little until i finally settle in to what will become standards.
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Holy shit! That’s exactly how I want my phat Manson that is dope
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wire channels aren’t included in the base price. Just the stain and grip. ITs not too late to upgrade though, i haven’t cut your deck yet and i could mail it up to Caden’s Carve Cave Incorporated (lol) and have them cut for you and do it like this. It would take the price up to $185 for single and $210 for dual though, and it would take a little longer, but what the hell, right?
I know the wire channels aren’t included I just meant the paint and the red cloud and grip.
I don’t got that much dough to blow! I’ll keep it in mind tho
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That is just plain sick ! Wowsers !
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you got it bro. BTW sorry again for the delay on your deck. I’ll have it shipped out this week i promise.
I wonder if Dethklok would be interested in one of these. Every time i look at it, i just see Nathan Explosion riding around on it.
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@longhairedboy Just a thought, but I would love to see a Tool inspired deck design from you. Something kind of grayish, alien, boney type thing. You know like Tool albums and videos…
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the old Tool videos were my inspiration for this:
so yeah… i’d love to see some creepy ass bone clad esk8 too. Maybe i’ll start figuring that out. It would be sick as hell.
moar board porn:
fabbed a few boxes over the last few days. Two of them are good, one of them was too long and caused me to have to rework the mold to be slightly shorter. So after reworking it, i got two good boxes that will hold the 48cell packs i make and all the other innards.
pics! because it happened!
sanded and cut:
textured and painted:
and on the board for a preview of what the whole thing looks like completed:
So some background on my boxes: yes i do a hand laying technique that does not involve a female (reverse) mold, i instead use a plug (male) mold and i don’t use a vacuum bag setup. This is how I have always done it because up until now i was never making the same box twice. Now that i’ve settled on a design, it makes more sense to do one of two things: make a female mold using the male form PLUS an existing box to get the thickness correct and have a flange, which will involve taking the time to not only make the box absolutely perfect so that the mold will be, but also doing it right and figuring out a vac bag setup… or getting somebody else to make them. I’m not 100% sure which way i want to go. When i’m making the boxes now, doing it the way i have been, it makes me want to get somebody else to do it.
Several people online have wondered why i have built my boxes this way this whole time. Now you know. Eseentially im’m still building and selling prototypes. That’s sort of my model, after all.
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so i got the rivet nuts epoxied in, sanded them smooth with the deck and re-touched the stain around them. Also, rivet nuts are GOLD so who wants that? black paint pen to the rescue!
tossed a couple of 1" foam strips in the bottom of the box to keep the battery pack and everything on it a little more insulated from vibration:
how 'bout that fuel guage? dremel surgery FTW. I got the rectangle cut out so tight the volt meter just snapped into the hole and stayed there before i even sealed it in with hot glue.
everything’s in the box now. Charging port, switch and fuel guage, battery packs, VESCs, BMS, and all the trimmings. Now all that’s left is to do some minor cable management and then set up the VESCs.
I should be street testing this bad bitch this weekend, and hopefully getting about this far on that witchblade build as well now that all the parts have arrived. Thanks @onloop for unclogging the works and getting my drive train sent out. You rock!
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Holy crap Damon!! I think you max out your case. Very cool build
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Thanks! yeah that’s about all the battery i can have in that box with any sort of foam padding. if i used a triangle type stacking method on the cells and lost the foam i could probably get another whole layer of cells, but then i’d need a stronger box lol