It’s awesome to have this data, thanks!
Did you notice any difference in how well/how quickly the solder wetted out onto the nickel? For me I have noticed that solder wets out quicker on sanded/roughed up nickel than smooth nickel.
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A month and half ago this dumbass (me) ordered copper sheets thinking he ordered 0.2x100x1000 but nooooooo turns out he ordered 0.1x10x1000…
fuck me sweet jesus at least I have 4 meters of it 🥲
anyone got dummy cells so I can try a copper/nickel spotwelding technique?
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Oh is this already a thing? I was under the impression it can’t be done on standard hardware because the resistivity of copper is too low to generate enough heat, and potentially that the copper electrodes will just weld themselves to it. I think you need tungsten electrode?
If you’re looking for victims to weld/solder/do some other cruel things to, you can try grabbing a couple of cheap USB power banks. Most department stores or whatever here have cheap single 18650 ones, no shipping required
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Smart I’ll try the dollar store 
And for the first part of your reply I’ve seen someone on a fb group that successfully spotwelded copper sheeting with help of nickel strip on where you would put the probes. If I am able to do it successfully I’ll do it, otherwise I’ll make a stencil cut the copper sheets solder it on to the nickel sheets then spotweld it in place instead of spotwelding then soldering.
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Ooohh interesting! Please keep us updated on how it goes. Forgot to mention probably best to heavily discharge/over discharge the donor cells first, unless you need to do performance testing after
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If it holds up to the tear test it should be good and i’ll test on live cells after with a bucket of sand just in case
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I just tried .2mm sandwich welding with copper + nickel with kweld, and I couldn’t get good joints, so I dunno. Perhaps try that .1mm. It would still add a significant amount of additional current. It’s not that the kweld didn’t have the current, I could get the copper to basically explode. It’s just too resistive. Makes a lot of sparks. Damages the electrodes.
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Old dead laptop batteries are a good source as well. They’ve usually got between three and eight 18650 cells each.
They can be a bit tricky to open up, but some gentle persuasion with a hammer usually does the trick.
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This is also my experience, it seems to be significantly faster and easier.
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It was a difference of a few seconds, honestly. What made the most noticeable difference was having flux on the surface first. I didn’t notice much benefit from the liquid no-clean flux, and it mostly evaporated immediately and acted as if there were none. Paste flux causes near instant wetting, no flux took another course seconds for the Flux in the solder to make its way to the surface as the blob formed.
I’ll take a break tonight and record some clips.
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Anyone got recommended solders and fluxes they swear by? I’ve been using the 1.5mm 63/37 Kester flux core and it’s meh, I can get beads to form reliably but its gross and messy and needs an ass load of heat
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This stuff has been great for anything I’ve done from keyboards to esk8. Melts very easily and isn’t particularly stinky.
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I’ve been using Radio Shack solder for years, I love it. I actually just ordered Kester solder since I thought it was the bee’s knees… So that’s fun.
I guess I’ll do tests on that too.
I love my kester. It has so much flux in it that getting joints on nickel is no problem.
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I don’t really bother scratching nickel if the heat is way up, I just smush fresh solder down with the iron and instant connection but so much flux splatter
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Interesting video I saw a while back. he seems like a 170-180ish pounds minimum and never really goes over 2000 watts. Mostly hovering around 500-800 watts uphill.
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he seems to have the setup geared haaard for torque because he’s never pushing much motor current - it’s always limited by the battery or the battery settings in the unity. If I try and accelerate from flat, never mind up a hill, it hits straight into the motor current limit even geared 12/44 because I’m ~230 and on cloudwheels
edit: wait I just saw the speed reading, what the hell?
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Sheesh 12t motor pulley, how tight are your belts?
My belt singular thank you very much, this dumbass decided a single 6355 would be a great idea
A wood/shop to make jigs/rigs to get whatever we need done?
of course