So I’m looking to gauge the interest out there of an idea of mine. The idea is this:
Cabling kits which have different lengths of cables with connectors on each end. Most would be male on one side, female on the other. But there will be a few small pieces that can link a male to male or female to a female. The idea is to eliminate the need of soldering, making it easier and 1 less tool need to build your own board.
An example kit could be:
6x 1 foot long cables (male on one side, female on other)
6x 6 inches long cables (male on one side, female on other)
6x 3 inches long cables (male on one side, female on other)
3x male to male convertor
3x female to female convertor
You could “daisy chain” cables together to achieve whatever length you need. You would not need to solder anything, thus making soldering an unnecessary skill to build your own electric skateboard.
What is the markets opinion of this? Would you buy a kit like this? If the desire is there, Ii will begin producing said kits for sale soon.
It’s a cool idea @evoheyax… when I started getting involved in esk8 I wanted to avoid soldering at first. I think people getting into their first build might really appreciate an offering like this. Of course, now I love to solder and look for reasons to fire up the iron!
You’d need to make sure that the connectors are vibration-proof, and that the quality of the connections isn’t degraded by varying wire gauges and extra length.
From my experience, a well soldered connector is vibration proof (you just have to use a small chisel tip that can make a really nice pool of solder in the plug). The quality of connections part is tricker. I could offer different gauges of wiring. I think 10 and 12 gauges are the most standard though to our application, and I could offer a 10 gauge version and a 12 gauge version.
oh, yes. I forgot to mention, my plan was to include pre-cut strips of electrical tape and/or heat shrink with the kit. This way, they can insulate connectors. You can use something as simple as a lighter or matches to shrink heatshrink.
It’s interesting idea how it uses magnets and plastic bolts to hold it tight. I wonder if there are still going to be resistance issues without soldering.
Unfortunately it’s minimum profile is two cells deep.
I know @hummie is planning on trying exactly that with his next build. I wounder how it will work, hold up under vibrations, ect.
With batteries, my idea is simply creating a parallel group of cells (say 2p, 3p, or 4p) soldered together with connectors on both ends. Then, the end user can create the exact size of pack they need with plug and play. And if a user needs to replace a bad p, they can just unplug the broken P and plug in the new P.
I’m following steps made by a couple people on es who’ve had good results using just 3/8"X11/8" magnets and .05" copper strips and conductive paste on ebikes for a while now. I plan to also use some further containment with them being on the bottom of the board, maybe duct tape or painting of rubber.
Nickel is 4 times more resistant than copper and solder is worse so assuming the connections are held the pack with copper strip can have lower resistance. Even doing direct magnet to cell connections is showing good with the standard nickel coated magnets and the interior of the magnet is also conductive. Nickel on nickel has no galvanic corrosion issues either. U can easily further nickel plate at home with an acid solution too. Contact area is greatly increased compared to spot welding.
Cool feature is can balance the pack by taking all the cells apart and putting them back all in parallel.
