I watched several other people try to explain how to do this and I felt uneasy after each one. Then I watched your video and it was the most well explained process, answered all my questions, and put in mind that I can do this successfully. A Very well done video!
Drill a small hole through the connecting strip at each solder point about 5mm, tin the strip at the hole (just filling the hole) and tin the battery with a small amount of solder, then connect the strip by soldering through the hole in the strip to the battery and adding a small amount of solder if needed, being fast as the strip will retain heat. The solder will flow between the strip and the battery creating the perfect joint.
Hilarious that @YestoGaming is calling you a noon as he clearly shows hes a noon @ RU-vid. Also keep in mind that even a clear explanation is lost on a feeble mind.
Good tip, but it's easier and safer for the batteries if you apply solder to your connecting strip as well and then place it facing the battery cap so when you apply heat, both solder covered points melt very rapidly and so it takes a very little amount of time.
He said at the very beginning of his video that The wire he was using was already tinned with solder. If you noticed all he did was tap it with the soldering iron and it was already tacked to it. Very very brief application of heat this man knows what he's doing.
'' You dont want to inhale this.. i dont want to inhale this !'' Great Video ! very well explains, using clear explanations and shooting angle.. thanks a lot.
I have been going through lot of videos aka battery building, but yours is pretty different you're amazing, with your teaching I'm probably going to build my electric battery
very nice, thanks for high temp reccomendation, 896F, very thin layer of flux is necessary, VERY THIN too much means you spend too long trying to solder and ruin the batteries. I was using too much and too low temp Also sand paper helps remove the top oxide layer from the metal which naturally happens if the batteries are used and or exposed to oxygen.
The positive battery end is a button, so less thermal mass to heat up while soldering your metal strap. This button sits on top of a ring that conducts when warm to cool. It is a (PTC) positive temperature coefficient thermistor that has low resistance until it gets hot. How hot, it depends on the size, thickness and specs for known resistance at degrees C/F. I am sure that many Li-ion batteries made, sold and assembled everyday from toys to tools. I use a 400 watt soldering iron with paste flux. Holding the strap down with the metal tips of needle nose pliers is fine but still effects thermal mass. What happens if the joint lifts apart while liquid? Use a paint stick or golf tee. They are would and won’t draw any heat. Get in and get out!
pro-tip: use magnets to hold tab wire down. I use an insulated screw driver in my other hand to hold the tab down as I solder so it cools in place (makes a good joint). The problem I find is if you lift the soldering iron without pressure on the tab the tab could lift with the iron.
Awesome showing!!! I will make my new quad batteries this way with your methods. THANK YOU for the SODER....ING. I understood you. GET YAH SOME OF DAT Michael!
Pls tell me ur not using 18650 cells, in a high discharge system like a quad. I guess it could work on a long range system, with relatively high discharge cells, but still...
This is the best video for this application... I see the welding videos and that welding machine is expensive plus once welded it is not easy to disassemble.
you should use stainless steel flux (very minimal application to avoid residual flux, as it is corrosive). with a 60-100W iron and a blunt tip you can tin the terminals in less than half a second
9:50 A good explanation but it'll help a lot to clean and then scratch/scuff those contacts before flowing solder on them. That will give the solder a better grip and contact point to grab on to.
I've actually found this to not be the case while soldering contacts onto CR2020 batteries to put into GameBoy Color cartridges. The areas I scratched up with sand paper held solder less effectively than the spots I didn't touch and in the end I wound up having to use a new battery from my pack which took far less effort to solder than the one that overheated and was scratched to begin with.
@@NearEDGE If that can help! There is sanding and soft sanding. I smoothly sanded with #220 and used alcohol isopropylic to clean the tip of the batteries and then flux before soldering. When I soldered I apply the tip of the iron, 3 sec max. I have done my drill pack battery for 3 years now without any problems.
Sir, you highly exceeded the heating time of negative casing of those cells.. I use old 50w russian solderingg iron with big tip ( a bit bigger than yours) to ensure high enough thermal mass .. In combination with alpha solder, my pre-soldering ( applying sokder to the metal casing) usually takes 1, maximum 3 seconds, no.more .. If i need to apply more solder , I wait until the cell cools.down , but usually I apply enough right away. Also I need to point out absence of insulating rings on positive dide in your case. . . While soldering the strio, you are taking chances of shorting those cells .. If I don't use insulating rings, I usually lift the strip away from the cells a bit, and let it dip down only in places, where strip makes contact with the cell. . negstive casing around positive terminal has only a thin plastic foil as an insulator and it can melt and make you sad very quickly . .. good.luck with your projects 🙏💪
I used tin from a spaghetti sauce can cut into strips. It worked. Originally used a butane soldering iron but it only marginally worked. I later used a 60 watt iron that worked great.
Good info! I wish I could afford a battery spot welder but unfortunately I can't even afford a decent soldering iron! I have a crappy one from Radio Shack! The tips are interchangeable but of course they only included a tiny one and wanted like $8 each for different sizes! I just took the included tip with me to Lowe's and got a 5" piece of copper rod that was the same diameter (like 4mm I think), then I just filed down the end until it was the perfect shape! Works really well!
@@steveandrews8301 It’s been a while but I think the last one I saw was in Atlanta… unless you’re doing fine precision electronics I’d suggest a soldering gun. If you’re feeling cheap, Harbor Freight makes a decent one but get the extended warranty because you’ll probably need it!
@@Blakehx Speaking of Radio Shack, do you happen to know of a replacement store, physical store or online, for Radio Shack? I really hated to seem Radio Shack close down like they did. Thanks.
I'd insulate the positive battery terminals, otherwise your positive strips can melt through the shrink wrap while soldering causing a short on the battery case.
Sand paper the battery surface and clean it with isopropanol before applying flux and soldering. You will have a piece of cake soldering process if you do that.
GOOD demo, but it is quite easy to use a small ( 30 amp 12v) lead acid motor bike battery as a inexpensive spot welding tool ,there are a few videos on RU-vid showing how to build it,
thanks for this video. i want to replace the battery pack for some of my snap-on power tools with lithium cells. i was always worried about trying solder lithium cells cause i heard you have to be certified to do it and there's a possibility of explosion if you get them too hot. i will attempt this on my own now. thanks again💪
@@nfreddyyy gaahahahaha giys I dont even remember this comment😆 Or why I didnt say I WAS JOKING! I usually say jk🤗...... I left it out out that comment😑 I was jk! Did it really work vuaeco ....?!!🤣😂🤣
hi vuaeco I have a question my wife bought a 240v food mixer and it worked once but no power now.its well made a krups but can I bypass switch to see if motor ok and if motor spins I can fit new switch,it has keypad thing.will leave that on top to keep waterproof and have switch coming out underneath or just use wall switch maybe?steve going send video
Soldering is a good alternative to spot welding. I am only making about a half dozen battery packs for amateur radio use. Three of them use 18650 cells and the other three are using Headway 38120 cells which have screws at each end (and do not require spot welding or soldering). I looked into a spot welding machine but decided it would be a waste of money when making only a few packs. In addition, I am left with the impression from looking at online videos and reviews that unless one is will to put out at least a few hundred dollars or more for a decent unit, the cheaper spot welders may not do a good job--some but not all of them looked as if they produced questionable welds. And then there's the issue with the wall wiring at home. Can my wiring manage the electrical requirements of a welding machine or am I going to need to be running to the breaker box and resetting it every 5 minutes? Proper soldering as demonstrated here eliminates the problem! Thanks for the video. There's lots of good info in it that one needs to know.
Great instructional video. Thanks! I want to replace a pack of 10 330 mah nimh batteries with new ones. The new ones have posts at the + end. I need to remove or flatten those posts in order to make them fit in the pack. How can I do that? Thanks
I have a Sunko Battery spot welder, it makes short work of welding nickel strips to the cells and there is no heating of the battery. I used to solder them, but I had too many issues with the wires coming off of the negative terminal, due to poor adhesion. If you make a lot of packs like I do then the spot welder will pay for itself.
That's debatable. If you make 18650 packs in an industrial scale then yes, the spot welder will pay for itself. Even if you make a lot of packs yourself, the cost is roughly the same. Nickel strips aren't cheap. This guy HBpowerwall who has a RU-vid channel and he makes mountains and mountains of 18650 packs and he solders all of his packs. And if you have a dead cell right in the center of the pack and need to get it out to replace with another cell, spot welding is a pain in the rear end to fix that. Whereas desoldering only takes a couple seconds.
Would using tin-bismuth solder work better as its melting point is 138C'. My concern is that in my application of an e-bike running at 50V and 20amps so 1kW this may be dangerously close and may start to effect the mechanical properties of the solder.
Thanks for making this video. In the last part you mentioned “it’s easy to replace the failed cell” One question- how would you know which cell is failed?
Just fully charge the whole pack and check the voltage. Any cell that has low voltage, there might be something wrong with it. I explained in very details in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cGBag85qN0U.html
@@vuaeco But if they're all wired together, already, how would you just isolate and test each individual battery in such a pack? Thanks. I'll check your link out, too.
Where are you from? Where do you live? Your accent is the hardest one for me to pick out. I think I hear a little Australian with some southern American mixed in there, with a little Asian as well. Good and informative video, by the way. Thumbs up.
Nice demonstration, I ordered some tin strip/wire, not very large, so the cost is not very high. Is it more dangerous to solder a healthy element than a dead one ? I made some test with the soldering iron and I think I did not heat too much , but will it be so cool with the new batteries. ? Thank you again for the demo and explanantions , the proof was in the pudding ;) What heat level limit (I can check that I did see some relatively low ceiling , about 45° centigrade but not sure it can create a heating cycle at that point)
Okay and with the way that you connected these batteries, what is the voltage of it now? Is that going to be 36 volts or is that just 12 volts three volts?
What is used to solder tin tabs to very tiny flat batteries size of a nickle?? i want to replace my old batteries in a auto darkening welding mast... thax
Similar in some ways to tabbing solar cells. I use about 720°F for that and using bus wire makes a lot of sense. I have the same soldering station and use the same tip. I've seen a lot of discussion on the downside of soldering; heat damage; and I was planning to try to make a spot welder from a 12V car battery controlling arc time with an arduino. If I could be sure I wasn't damaging the cells, I'd do it your way. You've been doing this for a while now so have you seen any evidence at all of negative effects due to the heat from soldering? PS -- the other thing I like about your way in addition to how the strip lays flat is that it's copper, and that has much better conductivity than nickel and especially nickel plated iron, which is what most of the strips you find online are. DC involves bulk resistiviy and nickel is 40% more conductive than iron but copper is four times as conductive as nickel. Thermal conductivity is similar. So soldering the bus wire would be preferable to soldering nickel or nickel plated iron, I would think.
I've been soldering all my batteries and I've seen no damage to them. As long as you don't spend too much time trying to heat the cells then it shouldn't be a problem. Most of these strips I can find are nickel. Copper would be best but more expensive. And I don't think it's necessary. By putting more solder to them when I solder them, I actually make the strip thicker and increase conductivity. I have used battery packs that discharge 30 Amps continuous and no heat to the strips or cells.
Thanks. Good to know. I think I'll do it your way. All of the tabbing and bus material I've used in my limited solar cell work has been dead-soft copper coated with solder; high conductivity copper that is oxygen free. I bought some nickel plated steel anticipating spot welding, but I'm going to use the solar cell bus strips and solder as you did. That should be easier to work with and perform better too. I'll be using new Panasonic NCR18650B cells and I have a bottle of the same rosin flux you use that I used in my solar panels and the same soldering station you do, so I should be OK. Thanks again!
hi, i have a question. for example I want to build a bigger battery and I don't have the same li-ion batteries. I can do this ? what criteria do they have to meet?
