The battery builders club

just the tip

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Dang I never realized I should be sharpening my tips, thank you.

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It comes down to the gear you are using I think.
I have played around with the power source quite a bit for my kweld im running two small/medium sized lead acid batteries. Sharp tips plays a roll as well.

not matter what I canā€™t weld 0.3mm thick nickel. I can blow through it if I want to & even melt the pvc wrapping if I up the joules to 100-150+. The bond is still shite.
0.2mm works wonders, and 0.15mm is piece of cake

Consider stepping down in thickness if nothing else works for and you are not happy with the weld strength.

100%

Welding too hot makes the nickel brittle, so it ā€œbreaksā€ off cleanly around the weld spot. The weld has good adhesion, but not the whole strip.

Duckā€™s pictures are exactly how it should tear off. Strong weld, and nickel that isnā€™t brittle around the weld.

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This pack was done with 0.30mm nickel. KWeld was attached to 3x 280ah LiFePO4 cells in series at about 60-70J / 1900A if I remember correctly.

The welds look slightly hot but they bonded well and mostly tore off ok.

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Yeah I guess there are a lot more factors to it. I have pushed both the cable length and amperage to its max and still was not happy with the consistency of the welds. They were not terrible by any means but they did not stick as well as the thinner stuff when welding to p42aā€™s.
Most tore the nickel off but not all of them. Canā€™t remember if it was the positive of negative side I had the most issues with.

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.3 is such a massive pain. Even if it welds nicely, and I build a whole pack with it, you can get like 6 or 7 welds done before the probes start to burn your fingers off. Itā€™s a very painful and slow process. :smiley:

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Yeah that too! And I def did not enjoy how much heat you dumped into the cells.

I cared more about how much heat it dumped into my fingers, but yeah, thats also a factor. :smiley:

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@BenjaminF 's tpu probe gripz do wonders for this and heā€™s wuite the gentleman in th a the has the stl on the product page.

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Yeah ik, but not only the probes were getting hot, the connectors too. like, VERY hot. You could smell hot plastic. Granted, I only had an XT90 on it at the time, which is quite enough for .15 :smiley:

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Anderson powerpole 175A connector could probably take anything you can throw at it without getting too warm.

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I put qs8 connectors on my kwelds and that has made a big difference to how quickly they heat up. Definitely recommend.

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I have some in a drawer and will definitively switch to them the next time I weld a pack. :slight_smile:

Is there a difference between a qs8 or just a 8mm bullet other than convenience?

Not really. QS8 jusy looks cooler and has an antispark (not that that matters too much in this application)

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putting bullets on batteries scares me

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Hah, i botched a set of as150 on a battery, i definitely understand what you mean dude, idk wtf i was thinking. Itā€™s definitely the kinda thing Iā€™d have done way back ehen i was toking, but i aint touched the stuff jn years, smhā€¦ each wire has both red and black housing, it makes no sense im going to have to laint em or tape em or something when i start using it.

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Wait till you realize what xt90s are actually made of.

Bullets. In a casing that doesnā€™t let you touch one bullet against the other.

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