Thanks to you both. It works. And its actually great that you can first break before putting the board to reverse. It would suck if the board just automatically reversed.
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If I’m gonna buy some wire. should i take whatever bezos offers me on a search for “silicone stranded blah awg” ?
or are there trusted stuff and known crap stuff I should pay attention to?
admission of guilt. this was my previous strat.
Pay attention to your wire guages. A huge mistake is not buying the correct AWG wires. You don’t wanna end up smoking your wires.
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ah yes. I meant “blah” as in whatever specific wire gauge I’m searching for at the moment. and I’m always searching for a specific gauge for a specific purpose.
Thanks for the check. 
its pretty simple once you know the current limits. Like 10awg silicone can handle 120A, 12 handles 70A
14 =45A
Etc. I almost made an error buying a 70A 12AWG for an 80A current battery pack. Glad I got the spark plug that was 10awg
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we keep a reference around:
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Fess what are you exactly looking for?
BNTECHGO is alright silicone wire… it’s not super-worm but it’s good for almost everything that you want silicone wire but don’t need super worm…
super worm by acer
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=superworm+wire&crid=AJQT15783J24&sprefix=super+worm+wire%2Caps%2C-1&ref=nb_sb_ss_sc_1_13
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14 or 12 gauge for my series connections on up coming batteries.
8 or 10 gauge for up coming battery pack leads
22 gauge for flipsky vx1 wiring repair.
22 gauge for battery pack balance wires if I build my own harness for length fit without extensions.
22-24 gauge for 3d printer rewire.
wire… give me all the wire.
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Those links should get you started!
Striveday Flexwire kits are also handy depending on how much wire you wanna stockpile
striveday is what i wired my 3d printer with and i have so many broken wires in the harness. it’s a voron2 with a complicated cable path to the head. so right now I formed the opinion that they suck. but looking at it I was supposed to get silicone, but I think it’s pvc now that I’ve seen more silicone wire. gonna try to figure out something to prove that.
does PVC wire break easier though? that’s what I think i’d learned but I don’t know where I learned that. I mean PVC is less flexible sheathing. but the coper inside has to bend less at that point so that’s confusing.
anyhow that experience left me sketched on wire. having to rewire crap because I picked the wrong wire is annoying.
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I’ve used Striveday Flex on quads the stuff I got was definitely silicone… you know what the good stuff feels like… buy at Bezos.com and send it right fuking back if it is not as advertised… I skim through the reviews…
plastic wire ain’t the worst of all still… it just doesn’t handle movement well and it sucks to solder
silicone insulation on multi-strand wire is the most flexible…and the most expensive
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I’ll have to examine the antenna for sure
I’m interested to know what is the best way to make an enclosure.
I made my enclosure with fiberglass and waterproofing materials, but I wanted to know, is there a better way of making an enclosure? I heard you can use hard plastic and compress it to make a form and create a mold that works. But sadly I don’t own a shop for that kind of thing.
PVC (and like 90% of other polymers used for wire insulation) melts. Silicone doesn’t. If you get it hot enough, it burns, but it doesn’t melt. Take a soldering iron to a piece of your uspect wire. If it will melt, it ain’t silicone.
Not really. Typical PVC (or other “standard” insulated) wire has comparatively few, thick strands in it compared to silicone wire. That thicker stranding means that the copper tends to work harden easier, which leads to failure under conditions of repetitive motion.
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There are a lot of different ways to do it, and no single one is the end-all-be-all “best ever” way to do it. They all have their pros and cons.
I did my first enclosure with fiberglass and resin. It was a complete mess and ugly as all hell, but it worked. The second one was done using the second method you mentioned: Thermoforming. Basically you heat up a sheet of appropriate plastic, and form it into a mold of your desired shape.
It can be done in many different ways. Vacuum forming is popular with thinner sheets, but tends to have trouble with sharp internal corners with thicker materials.
I used a positive mold made of MDF glued together and filed/sanded into shape, and a female mold made of foam Harbor Freight floor mat material cut to shape and glued together in layers.
I heated up my plastic (.080" thick Kydex, an ABS/PVC blend) in the kitchen oven, then sandwiched it between the male and female molds and stood on the stack until it was cool.
You don’t need any fancy stuff to get decent results this way. Just make up a male and female mold set and go for it. MDF is cheap and easy to work by hand, and the EVA floormats are cheap as well.
There’s also 3d printing, or premade enclosures, or IKEA silverware trays repurposed as enclosures, and a bunch of others that don’t readily spring to my mind.
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Thanks Ryan I always like hearing your thoughts!!
one thing I’ve found is, if you can’t pull the insulation off the wire with your fingernails on 20 ga wire~ish it’s not silicone
That’s also a decent indicator, although not always fool-proof. Silicone usually has a fairly low shear strength and low abrasion resistance too.
The exception is silicone-infused fiberglass insulation, that stuff is tough as shit.
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Thanks. Funny enough, you’re not lying about the resin being sticky. Fortunately for me, I managed to make my enclosure decent enough, despite using a fiberglass mat (worst decision ever. But it is absolutely strong).
I’ll probably use my oven for thermal forming. I tried that with a heat gun and let’s just say… it came out horrible…
Yeah, a heat gun is great for small adjustments like sharpening corners or adjusting contours, but you can’t make a full enclosure that way.
are there pictures?