How I made my lipo packs slimmer!

Hey everyone,

So a couple days ago I noticed in a thread that some people were aware on how to mod you lipos to be slimmer but most were not! So im gonna post how I made my lipo’s slimmer and the safe way to do it.

So i purchased a pair of Multistar 10 amp hour, 6s, 10c LiPo batteries. http://www.ebay.com/itm/RC-Multistar-High-Capacity-6S-10000mAh-Multi-Rotor-Lipo-Pack-/251752433534?hash=item3a9d9d477e:g:mNQAAOSwj0NUiQJ7

(i purchased them somewhere else but they are identical)

My end goal was to make a battery that i could safely put under my deck without having it smash into things when i drive (because usually high capacity LiPo’s are HUGE and slim packs are so ridiculously expensive) Note this is not the first time i do this, Just the most recent.

First i carefully took off the heat shrink and all the tape and soft pads holding the pack together. (this is the part that requires the most patience and a steady hand, as if you use a knife and cut into the Lipo’s they can vent and youll find yourself in a mess)

So i was pleasantly surprised when i noticed that Multistar doesnt glue theyre cells together because that saved the headache of spliting the cells apart! Usually how i would do this is to grab a credit card and slowly apply pressure in between the 2 cells and make sure to not push too hard to avoid making a hole in a cell. just be patient if you have to do this step.

Next youre going to want to open the lipo up like a bookand de-solder the midway point to your battery turns into (2) 11.1 volt packs. Do not remove any balance leads except for the midway point balance lead. I had to cut the aluminum tab because it was spot welded.

Here is the annoying part, The aluminum tabs on Lipo’s do not ‘wet’ to regular solder. So you can try to solder it all day long and your standard stuff wont stick to it. You’ll notice that one tab has regular solder (that is how it came) but the other I had to purchase special aluminum solder paste.

Once you put the aluminum paste and melt it with a soldering iron, you can apply regular solder to it and it will stick.

After that i took an 8 gauge fine stranded wire and attached the two tabs back together and resoldered the balance lead to that connection.

The last step is to insulate all your connections with whatever you would like. Hot glue, tape, whatever. And then tape the pack together so it is solid again and add heat shrink to the whole pack or tape it all up if yo udont have heat shrink!

Thats it! now you have your own slim lipo packs!

I hope i enlightened even just one person!

With this method you can save money if you cant afford 18650 based packs (me) and with basic knowledge you can create even thinner packs that span the entire bottom of the deck.

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good advice .

you mentioned Lipo .

i heard this presenter says Li~ion at 40th seconds into video . Li~ion ? Lipo ? which is better ?

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Li-ion is better, safer and has more charge cycles! those are (in our case) the 18650 batteries that the space cell uses for example. The quality of those batteries, as long as you get them from a good supplier, is un beatable (samsung, sony,LG) there are a lot of fakes out there though.

BUT that being said they are the more expensive option due to their quality. Which is why I cheap out and use LiPo. :slight_smile:

I’d say LiPo gets you 80% of the benefit with only 40% of the cost of Li-Ion. For me, that extra 20% benefit isnt worth the capital (which i dont have) XD Thats just my opinion

Where did you get the soldering paste?

you can also bend the pack at the top so instead of having the two smaller disconnected packs side-by-side that you need to resolder you can have them head-to-head and keep the connection intact. You have to insulate the heads so they don’t short against each other and then reshrink wrap. End up with a long pack that the wires come out the center

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Been there lol

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I bought it off amazon or eBay nothing fancy just do a search

Aluminum Solder Wire 96 Sn/4 Ag .062 Flux Core https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DC3102Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_stiaxbXZMH703

Found this aluminum solder and tried it out it worked exactly 30 million times better than that old stuff I used

If you didn’t add to this thread…I wouldn’t of known you put it up…I was just gonna ask you what you did… :facepunch:t2::zap::metal:t2:

I did a similar thing with my lipos. Except I layed them all out side by side.

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Omg how long did that take? I didn’t even want to try that I felt like it’d take so long

Also did you take pictures of the connections? I’d like to see it if you don’t mind

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Yea it’s really easy I just split one connection but lowguido spilt it multiple times. Do whatever your setup requires! I have 3 batteries that I need to split I’m gonna try to do what he did I’ll update this thread with results

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Ever work with these?

What’s the C rating on that?

That is an excellent question

It has a board on it which you’d have to take off for over charging and what not.

You’re better off just buying ready made lipos and dissecting them. I reccomend 8000 mah 6s zippy battery or 10000 mah 6s floureon lipo battery.

Honestly multistar sucks in my personal opinion

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it says its for phones and ipads so i would say 1c max

It didnt take me too long. A few hours max. I did 2 of them. Maybe one day I will have the means to make a video how I did it.

For what it is worth, it is a lot cheaper to buy a pack and separate them than it is to buy individual cells.

Lol I just did a pack like that! I was so inspired that after work I took 30 minutes and soldered it up. I didn’t attach balance leads or terminals. I have a lot of cells laying around and this is perfect.

The solder is key.

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