First time using spot welder, could use feedback / advice

:crystal_ball: You may rely on it

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that’s what i fuckin thought

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Batteries are dangerous, if you fuck up and start a fire you are in for a bad time. You can have 10 thousand good welds and still burn down your house on the next one…

Your groupings are very hard to see but they seem okayish for the positive side so I doubt you are in immanent danger of welding the shoulder, you at least have insulator rings but I seriously hope you will have a layer to protect the positive network from shorting out on the can. Also do some more practice welds, they look you are not applying enough pressure, you can tell by how small the weld point is yet the entire area is baked. And 100% round the corners

In general you are on the right track though, but just be careful

Also don’t mind kook right now, I think it’s just one of those days

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can you please describe what you mean by this? I plan to apply regular shrink wrap to completely cover the parallel groups before i string them together. do i need something besides the insulator rings before i weld the nickel?

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the nickel that overhangs everywhere could get bent down and short a cell out.

The entire body of each cell excluding the positive button, is electrically connected to the negative electrode.

That means any contact between the positive-side nickel and the cell body is equivalent to a direct positive-negative short circuit, AKA a Very Bad Thing.

Anywhere you have a conductor that isn’t connected to the negative, anywhere near, touching, almost-touching or could-touch, you need something to insulate between them and prevent shorts.

The cell wrapper and “regular heat shrink” aren’t heat- or abrasion-resistant enough for that job alone.

You need either fish paper, or polyimide sheet, or some other tough, heat and abrasion resistant material.

Kook is a bit of an abrasive shithead, but his advice is solid. Treat your battery-building as if you were working with fireworks or other incendiary devices, because that’s what they become if you make one wrong move. A bucket of sand is a reasonable precaution to take.

This, plus this thread as well. Battery Basics for Beginners [Serious] We try very hard to impress upon new builders just how unforgiving battery building can be.
It’s not at the level of high voltage/high energy physics, where you’re basically poking an Old Testament God in a can (Lots of rules, zero forgiveness), but it’s not too far removed from that.

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tenor

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I’m getting the vibe all you guys are abrasive dickheads. Pretty typical for esk8 to be honest

Not rounding off your nickel is a genuine fire hazard and shows you don’t know jack shit about building a battery.

@Minimadness i literally said in the original post i’m a total noob

Thank you for the people that gave me actual advice.

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@Fosterqc

My plan for the nickel that overhangs is to first wrap the groups, then bend that down intentionally to use as a place to solder on string conductors. But it seems like that’s not a good idea. How am i supposed to string the groups in series?

Dig through the previously-linked battery threads. Tons of examples of very clean, safe, proven methods.

I cannot stress enough: Read lots. Then, read more. Ask questions, and when the answer is to go read read X thread or post or tutorial, go read it. There’s a lot of information available here on the forum for first-time builders, but the onus is on you, to go seek it out and digest it.

There is no one best way, it all depends on your pack geometry and space constraints, among many other things.

It’s not the worst, but it definitely requires caution and forethought in the construction process.
At the very least, ensure that at no point along the nickel there should be no less than one (1) layer of fishpaper or equivalent, and one (1) layer of cell wrapper between it and the cell body.

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this one’s for you buddy

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This is a bad idea; the cells are already wrapped in shrink wrap anyway.

Do this, but with fishpaper. You can purcahse it at 145ptags.com if you are in the USA.

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Not everyone. Just certain folks. And yeah, definitely certain folks.

I don’t think @kook is one of them, though. He’s chill. But you should listen to his advice carefully. He’s trying to help you in his own way.

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Also this

For sure, that. Mostly, every battery is custom and has its own set of challenges.

Then why start welding when you don’t know anything and act surprised when people refuse to spoon feed you because it turns out you haven’t read shit. And then you tell someone to fuck off because of that, you’re the one that’s playing (literally) with fire and now complaining about getting burnt.

Hey kale,

Suggest looking at some other battery builds and coming up with a good plan before you start.

There is plenty of good info on here, you just need to search and read it. You’ve had some recommendations. The battery builders thread has lots.

People might be coming off harsh, (and the KooK is a Kook) but it is probably because you are asking for input on a topic about which many words are already written.

Telling @kook (or anyone) to fuck off is prob a dick move, but hey it’s your thread…

Good luck, and take care with the batteries

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Maybe a little Research in to the advantages/disadvantages to commonly used materials used for battery making might help him.

Look up
kapton tape
Fibre reinforced tape
Fish paper
Shrink wrap
Silicon cable
Copper braid/tined copper braid
Pure nickel strip

Ones you know advantages and weaknesses of each it will help to make a educated choice on how and were to use eatch and what it will help do / avoid situations

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yeah great, the battery build thread has over 9000 posts, real useful for pictures but not for much else

i’ve read shit, i’ve seen pictures, i’ve taken apart batteries of “pro” battery builders (i took apart my psychotiller battery (which was literally the cells hot glued together with plastic wrap)

it’s time to start learning by practicing and doing. i’m done reading.

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Lol that psychotiller battery was probably a bigger fire hazard than your test welds :rofl:

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