Totally. At some point they have to come up with something different. I heard that Bosch is using copper right now. But very thin layers.
I don’t know. I forget exactly how much but it takes very little energy to weld them and a cheap welder likely could.
A kweld can weld thin copper (0.1 for sure, I think 0.15 as well but yet to test that personally). You need to place a 0.1 thick steel strip on top, this acts as the heat source during welding, and is the only way that the kweld has enough power to weld copper. Nickel also works on top but steel is better.
If you buy a beefy spot welder that doesn’t have tungsten alloy electrodes, be ready to physically break off the probes from every single weld, and electrodes are going to be wearing down pretty quick. That’s my main gripe with my welder, this slows down the welding process significantly. My Glitter 811H 42kW version can weld copper to copper even, but you don’t really want to weld just copper, even though you can technically do it. The joints are much stronger with some steel or nickel in the weld.
A good weld on 0.3 copper + 0.1 steel when performing the tear test, tears open the can of the cell (P42A) instead of tearing the welded materials.
Copper is 4x as conductive as nickel, so even 0.1 copper can carry serious currents. Unless you plan to absolutely abuse tabless cells, I don’t see a point of using anything thicker than 0.15 copper (+0.1 steel) for most layouts
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Thanks for the information. I was thinking about getting the same spot welder. It has Tungsten alloy electrodes? How do you buy replacement electrodes?
People say don’t buy cells off aliexpress, but their welders are ok it seems?
They have copper electrodes and they stick to the weld. You need to break the electrodes off each time and it slows you down.
I bought mine spot welder from aliexpress, I never had issues buying tools from there. I would never buy cells from aliexpress though
@DIY500AMP.COM has a recent YT video where he builds a Milwaukee M18 battery with JP40 cells, and a Glitter h11, and punctures one cell can when the probe slips into a groove in the strip, while distracted with camera.
I think the kit he uses comes with nickel plated copper series/parallel connection, but not sure of their thickness. I cant find the video to link ATM. Perhaps he will chime in.
He has recently donated a bunch of Tabless Cells to @Battery_Mooch for testing, and you All should join Mooch’s Patreon to see the preliminary, very interesting results.
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so can you just buy new electrodes, and which variant of the glitter 811h 42 kw? I think there’s two different probe options?
I have the 50mm^2 probes, the beefiest option. You can get new copper electrodes for I think 15$ per 2 sets. I’m yet to go through my first set but from what I’ve heard you can go through a set fairly quick especially compared to something like a kweld, I’d expect a set of electrodes to last for 200-300 cells at high power.
From my so far fairly limited experience with the welder, you’ll need to apply fairly large pressure and hold the probes firm. Tweaking wise there’s some reference values in the manual for settings of different materials, definitely start there for testing, for the materials I tested always had good results with the values in the manual.