Well I was all but ready to dive into my first eboard build but it turns out that there are very few places to buy bulk Li-ions anywhere that ship to Australia. The chinese vendors that I typically buy Li-ions from (Gearbest, Banggood, Fasttech etc), none of them ship to Australia anymore
I then resorted to checking out other well known vendors such as Battery junction, Illumination supply, Nkon etc, but again they either dont ship to Australia or they charge an unreasonable amount for it. The only option left was Aus ebay sellers, but the cheapest option is asking 10 freaking dollars per 25R cell!!! Which is utterly outrageous!
Are there any other options that us Aus esk8 builders are left with?
This guy built my battery for $1 more per cell than I could buy them for.
He makes custom batteries. Give him the dimensions and he’ll give a quote. Several cell options available.
I bought 60 Samsung 25R cells recently, shipping took about 2-3 weeks from date of order but it was only about $25 to NZ so I expect shipping cost and time should be fairly similar for AUS
Thanks for both of your suggestions! For some reason last time I went on nkon yesterday they said they don’t ship to Australia, but now its all fine!? Shipping came to 30 pounds which is ok but a little bit on the expensive side…
@Jebe I’ve emailed that guy in Ballarat and we’ll see what his prices are like
thank for the link too.
surprisingly price is cheaper then singapore even included shipping fee.
but not sure have any custom tax or not.
i think i gonna buy from there…
Did you go to their Russian or Eu website? Russian site seems to be much cheaper overall for shipping outside of Eu, I’m guessing they can avoid possible VAT charges etc that way?
Didn’t have to pay any tax at all in my case. For reference, 60 Samsung 25R cells all up costs me $220AUD including shipping etc to NZ
Also worth mentioning that nkon offers the option to have the cells come with solder tags pre-welded at an extra charge which is great if you’re not spot welding your cells together
I saw the option for pre-soldered tags however I don’t think a single nickel strip per cell is sufficient enough to handle the current. You’d need to spot weld on more anyway…
That’s possible, but i’ve noticed even some 50-90C LiPo packs only have a thin metal strip… How does the amperage handling of solid material compare to that of stranded wire?
Also, @michaelcpg, how thick are those strips? that’s probably the biggest factor for current handling.
I’m not concerned about it personally. This is a 6p pack so I’m expecting 10A at the most to be drawn through each cell. The solder tabs are going to be soldered to bus bars via fuse wires and the length of solder tab between each cell and its fuse wire shouldn’t be more than a cm or two at most so I don’t expect I’ll have any issues
I’m not sure about how thick the tabs are but they look to be about the same thickness as the nickel strips that were spot welded on my space cell 3, much of which only used a single layer of strips
Yep he got back to me very promptly! In total 40 25R cells was going to cost almost $300 (AUD) shipped… I know he’s a local business and it’s good to support your own but I could not justify that price
In the end I went with NKON and 40 cells was only $175 (AUD) shipped! There were no import duties or tax fees.
