Low Temperature Solder and 18650 battery packs

hahhhahhaha got me laughing out loud alone in my room hahha

Then my work here is done for the night. I gotta get some rack time, work in the morning.

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haha my day is just starting: 8.30 am. Sleep well brothaaa

Got myself this nice cheap Arduino Spot Welder v3 running with the 5000mAh 3s 130C.

NICE (@rene). Got me thinking now.

It’s awesome, do .20 nickel all day long

How cheap? What do you do for power supply?

Also, do you make many battery packs?

if you don’t wanna spot weld you wanna solder them asap so you better use a superfast 100w solder. it’s better if you apply max heat for the minimum time possible. this is the one second solder technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZRwMXL-Rvs nevertheless i prefer spot welding…The damage is always lower. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byvr-dwwao4&t=1s

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Thankfully I have a pretty nice Hakko (spelling?) solder station. Might purchase a bigger tip for it though.

Get some good flux. I use “Ruby fluid” liquid flux, it helps the solder wet out and stick to the nickel battery contact with minimal heat. Works way better for that than rosin flux.

I basically go around and tin the contacts of all the batteries in a row, then let them cool while I tin the copper braid. Then I let that cool, and then solder them together. It’s very fast that way and you don’t get heat buildup.

Right… so copper-braid instead of nickel? … or both?

I’m a proponent of copper and solder over spot welding and nickel. It’s just more robust for high current applications.