Time for a new battery and I found a pile of Kaly PCBs in my parts bin. What has the consensus been on PCBs like these vs rolling your own nickel bus bars? I’ve done both, but I’m catching up from 2020 or so. 
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What size are these? 18650? 21700? IIRC the Kalys all used Samsung 50E cells.
I’d assume you still need to use the nickel strips anyway, this only replaces wires/braid, and as I’ve read, braid isn’t recommended as flex can fatigue it more than silicone wire.
Personally I think you can fit more cells into less enclosure with just nickel and paralleled thin AWG wire instead of PCB to connect packs. Not too hard to scuff a spot on the nickel to solder other connections to such as BMS wires.
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I have used PCB in the past. My 2cents: it just takes space, i still dont know why we collectivelly got into this. I can see benefits if you’re making a full battery with PCB, but only for P’s it doesnt make sense. It gives more structure to the P’s, but i would argue you dont need it, as your pack should not receive direct mechanical stress anyway.
You’re better off of it. Just make good P groups with silicon/glue+fish paper+fiber glass tape and good nickel and you are golden.
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I agree with everthing this guy 
just said
Also, @agentdev great to see you back on the forum! How have you been?
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Thanks guys! Totally makes sense @Quiles, I’ll save that for another day when I want to design a single board for the entire thing.
Been busy but it’s going well! Hoping to rebuild a few boards along with something new this year…so many inspiring builds here.
Will probably do a repeat of what I did before:
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- I am replacing the old Sanyo 20700B (lol) cells with Molicel P42A.
P50B looks amazing, but these were cheap AF and still lights years ahead of what I had before.
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