Battery packs - no spot welder or solder required

jga · June 12, 2017, 11:12am

The kit contains 50 plastic holders, so you can go up to 10S5P, which is already a decent size. There are indeed in the kit plastic strap to ensure the cells don’t come loose from the holders. I assume you can put as much as you want. They are saying the system can handle vibrations, but they also suggest to add loctite of hot glue on the thread if you want to be completely safe. One of the guys behind this company has made a lot of videos on batteries for e-bike (he is the one you can on the demonstration video on Youtube). He usually spot welds all his batteries. I assume that if he promotes this new system he is reasonably confident the result will be similar. you probably have more vibrations on a Esk8 than on an E-bike, but if a battery is placed in a good enclosure I cannot see how you cannot manage to make it stable. Happy to see the first test by a member.

karosass1 · June 12, 2017, 11:22am

I’m kind of interested, but would it be possible to connect them vertically, as in like this:

They don’t show anything similar in their examples.

Mikeomania12 · June 12, 2017, 1:17pm

Interesting but too much wasted space for me.

Smorto · June 12, 2017, 2:22pm

I am wondering about this two, could allow for more compact battery packs.

jga · June 12, 2017, 2:37pm

I think it’s only possible if you bend the connecting plates in a V or U shape. The structure is made for batteries standing up with an horizontal perpendicular connection.

karosass1 · June 12, 2017, 2:40pm

Yeah, I will probably just go with this:

SpeedSloth · June 12, 2017, 3:50pm

There is a comment on one of the videos from the creator talking about using them for electric skateboards. He mentioned that they are not rated high enough for an e board at the moment unless you use a large amount of cells in parallel to spread the load. He did say that they are in the process of developing a higher rated version for the future.

wmj259 · June 12, 2017, 3:52pm

Plus like someone else mentioned the vibration from usage in a electric skateboard would just tear it apart. He recommends it for bikes because they have their own independent suspension system that basically dampens every vibration from the road.

banjaxxed · June 12, 2017, 4:23pm

The plastic in use has a slight amount of flex and the cells go in very snugly, I promise you I can not see them coming loose.

The recommendation to not exceed 50 cells is more due to the likelyhood of total pack weight strain on the joints, this can be fixed with a variety of methods.

And of course the stainless steel used in the connectors, bolts & contact tabs are not very current friendly it’s true.

The problem with introducing threadlock is that you can make a barrier using 2 nuts locked together makes more sense?

jmasta · June 12, 2017, 8:39pm

Looks like something you could 3D print yourself…

banjaxxed · June 13, 2017, 10:16am

And yes have seen a million stl files out there, I guess their IP is the bolting system in tandem with dovetails joining, making it fairly simple for… well even me to use.

Has it been done before? Well since I was asked fairly quickly by the Vruzend people who I was after making a post of two on their thread, in reality, <-> username on ES I think they are worried about imitation being the highest form of flattery…I told them my name, I am not a manufacturer of eStuff.

Probably if you search all the sites you will find that it is maybe an amalgamation of derivatives but in combination fairly effective and once you have a patent which I am pretty sure they have, then it doesn’t matter if they got their idea off something else.

But yes you could download a stl of a 18650 cap and modify it to have a top caps with a small hole in it and add your own hardware, there’s no escaping that fact. I just bough two of their kits which were fairly cheap but I would have paid more to not have the shitty steel in them which caused a couple of cuts on removal already in the 2 parallels I’ve made so far.

SpeedSloth · June 14, 2017, 10:08am

Here is the comment I read from the creator:

banjaxxed · June 14, 2017, 3:24pm

That dude Micah Toll is their US distributer, he is very social media savvy and well placed in the ebike market to market their product. And yes it is not a high power application (unless you modify like I am in the process of doing)

SpeedSloth · June 16, 2017, 12:15pm

Can I ask what mods you are doing to improve them? They do seem like a very good solution if they can be used on a board

banjaxxed · June 23, 2017, 10:26pm

I replaced the SS metal spring contacts with 1mm silver plated beryillium-copper wire fashioned into springs, also the SS bolts/nuts were replaced with 3mm brass bolts/nuts with washers on either side of the cap. 12mm pure nickel for the parallel connections and 2mm silver plated copper for the series connections. I’ll use a copper busbar on both terminal ends to complete

Holyman92 · April 8, 2018, 9:06am

Sorry to reseruct… but i have the newest kit and its in now way useful… it keeps decompressing itself and needs to be compressed every few days and causes overvolt faults and makes the vest reset constantly to the point the board is unusable and the 1st couple times it bucked me off going 20+ mph (1st time i flew into a median any time after that i hit the ground running)

E1Allen · April 8, 2018, 9:10am

Decompressing?

Holyman92 · April 8, 2018, 9:13am

so when u build the pack u snap the end caps on the cells and u need to “compress” the pack, i use a couple short 2x4’s and my vice (not hard or u will kill the cells or break the plastic) well, as you ride they slowly but surely work themselves loose and cause under/over voltage faults… im dealing with that issue now, this time it was over voltage faults

The following faults were registered since start:

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -6.2 Current filtered : -9.4 Voltage : 57.45 Duty : 0.240 RPM : 17840.9 Tacho : 316785 Cycles running : 8222 TIM duty : 3394 TIM val samp : 1697 TIM current samp : 8766 TIM top : 14139 Comm step : 1 Temperature : 75.80

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -13.5 Current filtered : -11.0 Voltage : 57.73 Duty : 0.167 RPM : 13405.0 Tacho : 528970 Cycles running : 11971 TIM duty : 3059 TIM val samp : 1529 TIM current samp : 10663 TIM top : 18268 Comm step : 2 Temperature : 75.67

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -13.5 Current filtered : -22.1 Voltage : 58.13 Duty : 0.135 RPM : 11982.8 Tacho : 531729 Cycles running : 3292 TIM duty : 2837 TIM val samp : 1418 TIM current samp : 11919 TIM top : 21002 Comm step : 1 Temperature : 76.13

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -15.2 Current filtered : -15.2 Voltage : 57.70 Duty : 0.133 RPM : 11358.6 Tacho : 533092 Cycles running : 1005 TIM duty : 2820 TIM val samp : 1410 TIM current samp : 12018 TIM top : 21217 Comm step : 2 Temperature : 75.87

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -28.8 Current filtered : -24.5 Voltage : 58.37 Duty : 0.090 RPM : 9394.8 Tacho : 535393 Cycles running : 6982 TIM duty : 2395 TIM val samp : 1197 TIM current samp : 14430 TIM top : 26465 Comm step : 5 Temperature : 74.65

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -6.9 Current filtered : -3.6 Voltage : 57.39 Duty : 0.306 RPM : 22435.7 Tacho : 670864 Cycles running : 10792 TIM duty : 3589 TIM val samp : 1794 TIM current samp : 7656 TIM top : 11723 Comm step : 2 Temperature : 80.14

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -7.4 Current filtered : -6.1 Voltage : 57.23 Duty : 0.289 RPM : 21303.0 Tacho : 672337 Cycles running : 717 TIM duty : 3547 TIM val samp : 1773 TIM current samp : 7900 TIM top : 12253 Comm step : 5 Temperature : 79.64

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -19.7 Current filtered : -18.5 Voltage : 58.13 Duty : 0.236 RPM : 17821.2 Tacho : 675390 Cycles running : 10829 TIM duty : 3380 TIM val samp : 1690 TIM current samp : 8841 TIM top : 14302 Comm step : 4 Temperature : 79.42

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -24.1 Current filtered : -23.8 Voltage : 58.40 Duty : 0.173 RPM : 14644.5 Tacho : 677196 Cycles running : 4424 TIM duty : 3091 TIM val samp : 1545 TIM current samp : 10482 TIM top : 17874 Comm step : 4 Temperature : 79.28

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -3.8 Current filtered : -7.0 Voltage : 57.32 Duty : 0.184 RPM : 13773.5 Tacho : 761773 Cycles running : 22703 TIM duty : 3150 TIM val samp : 1575 TIM current samp : 10148 TIM top : 17146 Comm step : 1 Temperature : 83.72

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -19.5 Current filtered : -21.8 Voltage : 58.13 Duty : 0.142 RPM : 12271.8 Tacho : 763249 Cycles running : 5563 TIM duty : 2890 TIM val samp : 1445 TIM current samp : 11623 TIM top : 20356 Comm step : 1 Temperature : 84.21

Fault : FAULT_CODE_OVER_VOLTAGE Current : -20.6 Current filtered : -27.0 Voltage : 58.27 Duty : 0.126 RPM : 11123.0 Tacho : 764499 Cycles running : 3889 TIM duty : 2763 TIM val samp : 1381 TIM current samp : 12341 TIM top : 21920 Comm step : 3 Temperature : 84.86