Enclosure Problem: Need Advice

Bought a great enclosure from @psychotiller, but ran into a few problems.

The depth of the enclosure is about 33mm. My Gen ACE batteries are about 50mm tall. The positive and negative prongs stick up vertical from the battery. Bending it is a no-go, as I would just damage the wires (the ends of the leads are very ridged).

Dave recommended taking apart the batteries and removing the hard case. While I’m reluctant to do this, this may be the only way. Any other suggestions from the net?

well there are angled connectors available. if you cant find them you can just make your own.

chekc that build. there is a pic of them. he just made his own :wink:

I made my own using a larger none insulated butt splice then cutting them in half. Then I soldered the wire on one end. They worked perfectly. The only thing I had to do is make sure I had the correct bullet connectors. You can kinda see it in the pictures I posted on my silver build

I’m thinking something like this will work…Thoughts?

Another option, depending on your clearance, is to cut or drill holes into the case, so those plugs stick out of the enclosure. Then connect them in series (outside of the case), preferably with very short wires and your good.

Honestly, the best 2s lipos are the 8000 mAh zippy flight max’s. but that’s another rant in itself.

There’s the big downside here of your showing a bunch of wires outside of your case, but the convince is you’ll be able to balance charge each pack without having to take the case off, or if your doing 12s like me, you could split them into 3 x 4s’s for balance charging. Taking a case on and off to balance charge can get quite annoying.

I’m hardwiring the batteries into a 10S and connecting to a BMS.

I too have an @psychotiller enclosure and I used foam insulation tape to solve this problem for me. I used two layers and it works great for a bit more battery clearance and the fills the space created by the concave of the board.

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What about laying the batteries on their side if you have room in the enclosure? Then the wires can do along the batteries instead of up.

Thanks for the recommendation. Still too tall unfortunately.

On my similar build, I mounted the battery packs to the deck using double sided servo tape to hold the batteries in place with the wires towards the enclosure. I also mounted all of the electronics to the deck and my enclosure is just a cover. Then you could make spacers out of wood strips to go between the enclosure and the deck to raise the enclosure. An other option is to contact psychotiller about getting a custom enclosure.

Another option would be to remake your battery connections with the wires going horizontal through the access holes in the side of the connectors and the balance wires into the top hole. The center balance wire can probably be bent over or reconnected like the main wires.

5 short jumpers for series connections and 2 long jumpers for main supply. Like this:

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Contact was made about a custom enclosure…Thing is, Every tall enclosure looks bad. Clearance will still be an issue. It will just be with the enclosure hitting the ground or a board set up on risers way too high. There are various reasons. Biggest reason though is the taller the enclosure, the steeper the walls need to be. Which makes it really difficult to get the mold out of the formed abs without stressing it or cracking it. 50mm is too tall. I’m not making enclosures taller than 40mm anymore unless the deck width is wider than 10"

just 90 degree those connectors… problem solved.

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And if modifying the connectors isn’t enough, you can also put wood spacers or thick weather stripping under the enclosure flange.

In that case, removing them from the hard cases would be the way to go to me.

I would have that option as a last resort. It would be very difficult to remove the hard case without damaging the pouches.

You have a good point. I didn’t think about what if the hard case is glued to the cell.

Is it too late to return them?

It depends how hard it is to remove them, and I’ve never opened a hard case before, so I’d just be guessing as to the difficulty.

Personally, I would try opening one if I were you, but yet again, I’ve destroyed cells that were glued together before. If glue is involved, it’s difficult to break, even with rubbing alcohol and dental floss like many have said to split cells.

I guess it depends if your willing to risk losing a pack of cells or not.

Other workarounds are more likely to work, but this would give the cleanest appearance IMO and wouldn’t require any other mods.