Best water "proofing" techniques?

Youp I’m having a channel made between my outer layers of carbon and fibreglass. And I’m either using natural cure silicone or epoxying in a short piece of wire permanently that I then add connectors to. Both seems to be able to pass the bathtub over night test. And if possible using a button less antispark such as gamer43’s then you only have to worry about a charge port. I use silicone there as well

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Sounds like a solid plan :+1:

Don’t focus solely on water resistance though, also think about what if water gets inside :ok_hand:

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What do you mean?

That i use that neoprene for now…
When i will spend more money on the board it will get some rubber strips and become waterproof

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Ohh ok, what are you planning on getting? I haven’t bought any of this yet so I may follow you

I did something very similar on my evolve.
But I used a black paint pen to colour the silicone, it works a treat

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I hate the stuff with a passion.

Super sticky, gets everywhere, doesn’t come out of anything and never cures.

…But I can’t deny that it works super well, so it keeps its place in the toolbox.

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Thanks for this suggestion, agree it’s really nice

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Anybody tried or got an opinion on Flex Tape? I’d love to have a reason to support this guy:

Just thought of a cheap solution, might be straightforward for moderate amp setups and upgradable with cooling solutions for high amp setups :bulb:

What about vacuum bagging the innards of your enclosure? Heatgun seal everything, seal holes for cables with silicon. It will even help chase residual moisture out when you first vacuum and seal. Add clothing around edgy areas like battery strips and soldered cables.

If you need active cooling, add a double aluminum plate as heatsink to your bag with a square cut through, seal with silicon + heatgun again. Pressfit the plates, one inside the bag, one outside. You can manage however your want to cool down the heatsink then. Might even add mineral oil inside the vacuum bag for the hard-core.

As long as the bag isn’t pierced, your elecs are good to go even if water manages to get inside the enclosure. If you need to operate your setup, minimal to no cleaning is required. Pry open, repair, Re vacuum with a new bag.

Brian @b264 have you tried that yet?

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No, but I have recently tried butyl tape and it seems really, really good for water resistance. So good, in fact, that it maybe might not even be necessary to waterproof. Experiments ongoing…

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Keep us posted on this yeah? What brand of butyl tape are you using? Do you have any photos of how you’ve applied the tape?

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I’ve only had some for about 2 weeks, I’m going to have to get back to you on that. Still checking it out…

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Wait but if you seal the enclosure won’t the parts heat up and generate steam? It’ll turn into water right?

butyl tape has to be reapplied all over again every time you open up the enclosure if you want to be 100% sure of having a watertight enclosure, and that is a pain in the ass.

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nah you will be fine.

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Yes, it is a pain in the ass, I’ve now reapplied it twice.

However, if it works really well and I don’t have to waterproof the stuff inside, it’s a tradeoff I’ll make. Waterproofing the inside sucks. Now that’s a serious pain in the ass. And then when you need to work on something… fugget about it

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Silica bags

This is exactly why this method appeals to me. I’m getting one of the new Bioboards, so in order to make sure its various components can be worked on as needed there’s no way I could waterproof it to the extent that I’ve seen done by you. I plan to open it up when I first get it and give the Stormcores and parts of the battery PCB some 419D acrylic conformal coating, and I’m going to stuff some sugru to fill in the gaps between the cables going through the IP68 grommets… but there’s no way I could pot my whole setup in silicone. If the butyl tape works well enough, I am totally fine with having to reapply it every time I open up the board for maintenance.

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I don’t think this will work for ABS enclosures though, only nice strong thick fiberglass (or carbon, but don’t use carbon) ones. Reason being that getting the enclosure off involved lots of prying and bending and cussing. ABS would have been shredded by the removal process. If you have an ABS enclosure and want to use butyl tape, I’d cover the alcohol-cleaned enclosure with 3 layers of fiberglass first, or at least all along the perimeter.

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