Hey guys,
Enertion’s space cell enclosure arrived a few days ago and I’m about to start installing my space cell in it. I’m looking to pull the space cell apart, removing the plastic cell holders and nickel strips and then resolder the cells together with copper wire that I bought today but just wanted to see if you guys think this stuff should be thick enough?
It doesn’t have a guage measurement on it but says it’s rated for 25A so I was planning to solder two bits of wire between each cell to be safe/add strength to the connections.
Are there any issues I could have with the battery if I were to solder it together this way?
Doesn’t fit in the enclosure otherwise due to the fact that the plastic cell holders stop the cells from being able to sit between the ribs of the enclosure, connecting the batteries via wires rather than nickel strips should also make the battery more forgiving when it comes to small amounts of board flex
I would use thicker wires - why waste energy on heating up small battery wires if you could use that energy for higher topspeed or longer range. everything depends on the length of the cable of course … play around with DC voltage drop calculators!
the total length of wire in a fully assembled battery is quite significant. in most 18650 setups you can roughly say, its about 4x the battery length (flat layouts used in most boards and used by the space cell). in my case probably around 2m including the cable ends and everything until the vesc is connected.
thats the reason why I reinforce my batteries with copper wires ontop of the nickel strips. you have quite significant losses within your system BEFORE it actually enters the esc & motors!
That seems to be the case, at least not without really squeezing it between the enclosure and the deck which I’m not comfortable with due the fact that it’ll stress the battery with any amount of board flex. To some extent it makes sense though as the original space cell was designed to fit in the raptor where as the new space cells usually come preinstalled in the enclosures.
I measured the diameter of the cable I bought and it’s somewhere between 2 - 2.5mm which looks to put it somewhere between 12 and 10AWG so the voltage drop doesn’t look too bad? Considering that I’m looking at soldering two wires between each cell as well, shouldn’t the wire I have be thick enough?
Before you go taking the battery apart I’d contact Enertion for some support. This seems like a lot of unnecessary work that might ruin an expensive battery.
The SPACE Cell Pro is a new battery design all together. So the Case is not meant to be a case for the old version. I just offer it separately to anyone who needs a nice case…
However, someone did confirm via email that the Old SPACE Cell actually fit inside…
A warning about compatibility issues on your website’s page for the separate enclosure may be a good idea.
Although it may just fit, I don’t think I’d personally feel comfortable using the battery in the enclosure in this way due to there being essentially no excess room at all to allow for minor flexing of the board during riding without putting pressure on the battery. Just something to keep in mind.
Height. The plastic spacers on the cells mean that the cells can’t fit into the ribs of the enclosure which means that the battery sits higher than it otherwise would
In that case you might want to try removing material from the enclosure, or the deck, or add a spacer around the outside of the case to fill the gap to the deck. Im not using a space cell, but in order to get my battery to fit the case I bought, I had to carve about 3mm out of the deck, and I added a 3mm rubber spacer.
Although it’s a longer process, pulling my battery apart and rewiring it is really my only option because I also want to upgrade it to a 10S4P pack in the near future and the only way I can fit that many cells in the enclosure is removing the cells from the plastic spacers as the battery pack will be too long for the enclosure otherwise.
So you will dismantle the space cell just to rebuild it while soldering the cells and hopefully nothing will go wrong?
Dude this sounds like a bad idea, mind as well buy some single cells and go from there. Use your space cell for another build or sell it.
Mind you another option would be to break off all the plastic holders and “fold” the nickel strip so the cells are closer together… Again this doesn’t sound like an elegant solution neither
It’s definitely not the ideal solution but I had to basically build the space cell from scratch in the first place because that was the only way Jason could get it into the country (NZ).
Selling it and buying new cells isn’t really an ideal solution either as it’d likely mean I’d end up losing money overall and I’d probably have trouble finding a buyer anyway due to the e-board market in NZ being pretty small and shipping overseas would just be a hassle. Buying 18650’s locally is also way too expensive and importing from most overseas sellers looks to take weeks or even a month for shipping which I’d rather not spend that long without a board as it’s my primary way of commuting to work.
I was actually considering just breaking off the plastic spacers but that would likely end up being an even worse idea due to the fact that it’d probably actually be quite difficult to break them all off without damaging the cells due to how tightly they hold the cells and using pliers or a knife so close to the cells just seems like it probably wouldn’t end well…
Ah the joys of being so secluded from the rest of the world…
