hey guys this is Frank this week we're going to talk about this battery pack
that I built last week or I started working on and one of the difficulties I
had was these cross members I'm having problems with them I don't like them
they stand up too high and one of the problems that I have is this is going
into a portable power pack and that just chews up room I don't have a room for
that and I need something that's going to lay a little flatter on the battery
so in this video here we're going to talk about some of the ideas I had and
how I came up with the ideas to actually change my busbars I know that I spent
time last week putting them in and creating elements so well scrap that and
we're gonna start over with some fresh busbars so let's do it
hi I'm Frank and this is the DIY engineer channel this channel is all
about DIY projects and recently we're doing mainly just 18 650 batteries we're
doing these big batteries where we're taking cells that we harvest from
laptops or we buy new or we find wherever and we take and and basically
repurpose them salvage them repurpose them and create things like portable
power packs small portable power packs all up to large portable power packs and
even power walls here in the near future my son and I are planning on actually
converting his early 90s Mazda Miata to an Eevee to an electric vehicle and
we're hoping to do it with 18 650s and it's gonna be a fun project to convert
that car from gas to electric whole just see what the the issues are there I'm
sure we're gonna run into all sorts of fun stuff I'm something that things
we're hoping to do is put some solar panels on the house maybe not on the
house but we're gonna put in a solar array and I'd lock also like to build a
garden shed and do some other construction projects so if you have any
comments or if you find this stuff interesting please subscribe below and
just leave comments let me know let me know what you want to see and what you
have an interest in so to start with when I was looking at reviewing the
busbars cuz I just didn't like the size watching YouTube videos right that's
what we do we need help with something we go to youtube and see what we can
find and I'd like to thank Leif x-pac Leif actually put together a video that
showed some busbars that he had built it's similar to the type of technology
that I use where I take standard house wiring and and repurpose it for busbars
but I liked his his design because it actually laid a lot flatter on the cells
and part of what I want to accomplish is being able to have you know take up not
quite so much room and the other thing was is I had some ideas on how I wanted
to tie the different cells together and so I built a jig I built the jig and I
built a process and I'm gonna go and share that with you now so let's go to
the garage and take a look at what I've got built for you all right so what we
have here is I'm doing a redesign of my best bars because I really didn't like
it so this is the new busbar that I'm looking to build this is a the
centerpiece this would go between four cell sets so if I take this and run it
on top of the battery pack it looks something like that it looks something
kind of like that will get mounted down once we get everything cleaned up and
then what I'll do is I'll run these other bus bars in line with these again
this was an idea that I got from watching this video this would be one
side of a battery pack and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to show you how I
build these bus bars because I like a much better and the reason I like them
better is because they set down lower to the the cells they're not as high so I
have less profile which I need because at this I'm putting this in a tight
space I started thinking about it with that twisted wire you end up with this
bulk on one side so then what I'll have is I'll just have these bars that will
run in sync and for me enough conduit for the power
to flow through the cells so now if I'm looking at the other side of this
battery what I have is because I'll be going down the center on the next one
and then the ends will have double busbars so there's gonna be two bus bars
there and then that'll be two there with the loops and then I'll have two over
here and another one here in the middle so this kind of this redesign was just I
was grasping because I didn't want all that bulk I think this is actually going
to be easier to build so let me show you how I put together my jig in creating
the jig the parts that I'm using here's this piece of old OSB hammer and I'm
using this for a crimp tool it's just a stripper and crimp and I got a pair of
dikes here and then I got a bunch of crimps I'm using the crimps because I
was thinking about how can I tie these pieces together in the middle and I
thought about twisting them but I didn't like that because I was getting that
bulk back in and I remembered that when I was building my homes and I did the
wiring I always had to tie my wires together and I would twist them and then
add these ties well the only reason I'm adding them here isn't necessarily for
to be improved conductor what I'm trying to do is just bring them together so
that they're not as floppy and it will help hand conducting and that's why I
have double going across and this is this is all 12-gauge wire okay so got
the tools got some nails and my my crimps and then what I did is I took one
of my extra frames that I had for myself back and now I want to move my camera
around I'll show you how I established two jigs one for the u-shape and then
one for the round shape so what I have here is I initially took my the cell
holder that I have and I figured out that I needed to come in five cells so
what I did down here is I just had worked this in to the corners
so I took my starting corner here not in the end but just over in this section
here and I'm just going to tack this in so you can see so it just kind of
touches the cell holder on the bottom and then I put another one in the corner
over here on the other side let me see if I can get you a close-up of this I'll
get a photograph of it all right so that goes in that corner there and then I
went down five so I took in five cells one two three four five this is my fifth
cell and again I just want to go on this inside corner so again tack this in
and then I put another one in the corner over here just so I have that that's
just one side that's just one side and then after I did that I went over into I
went over I skipped a cell and went into the third cell because that's kind of
how this lays if I can pull this off here and you can see what I have here is
1 2 3 4 5 and then this centerpiece so now my fuse to go in between these and
then so then I go over to the third one and then I need to be able to do this
this piece here and so that's we're putting in down here as I'm adding in
come on you get little crooked on me and I'm just putting these in light because
this isn't going to stay just showing you all right well you get the idea so
when then when I bring my wire in and do a wrap it would go around those screws
for those nails and and wrap so that's how a jig did I just I worked it out and
if you guys are building this stuff you're smart enough to figure this out
you don't need me showing you every little detail but this is kind of the
way that I did it and it worked out quite well I took and actually drew
lines thus the sharpie so that I could
remember the pattern of how that all went together so when looking at the
pattern you can see here that the nails themselves I just have three of them in
those corners to help stabilize the wire because I'm pulling on them and then
this here is for wrapping and I'll show you that in just a second and then these
here are my starters so let me mount this back up and we'll make an end piece
one of the you pieces you can see how I pull that wire through okay so now that
I have my jig built what I need to do is grab a piece
wire and then what I do is I just work it into that first part of the jig and
then I wrap it through those nails and they actually stay in place I don't have
to do a whole lot once I get it here and then all I do is I just hold it down
good and firm and wrap it around those nails so it follows those lines and then
as I bring over the next one and that is my first piece so this is the you piece
just gonna cut it off somewhere in there I'm going to trim them back later but
that gives me this you piece which I crimp in later on so it's the same size
every time I can make tons of them because I have the jig already made up
okay so next I want to do this one and it's a little bit different in that my
starting point is kind of in the middle I'm going to start here in my jig and
then again just wrap it around nice and firm wrap this one around straighten it
out here a little bit excess well that's gonna take a little work and then we're
going to bring it around again and one more time around this corner from that
up and back into the starting block then I'm just going to take and kind of work
it a little bit let me take my my dikes and just kind of straighten things out
make it so it has that shape or gets the shape that I'm looking for and then I'll
just take my dikes and just cut them off cut off my my rap all right so let's
take a look at this piece and the other piece they're not perfect perfect but
the general shape is there until I just have to do is give it a little bit of
tweaking it's a lot easier and trying to do this all manually and that gives me
one of my loops so they're consistent every time so I have another one and
then really quick what I'm going to do is take this out all right there's a
loop and at this point what I want to do now is just join them so I have these
pieces become one and I'll do that with these these copper crimps so I'll just
run this copper crimp down into the center of this grab my Center here and
run it through here and now I have my crimp in place the wires were all made
my crimp tool and just give that a good squeeze so there is a the start of
another which will actually be the bottom side of this battery hopefully
that was helpful please subscribe leave a comment to ask
questions tell me what you think am I on the right track or is this just crazy
talk so please subscribe below leave comments ding the bell thing the Bell is
always a good sign because then that way there you get more contents you actually
know when I post and I appreciate you watching so till next week have a good
one you know all topic over like for p-40s what comes first the 40's to the
40 p 4s as whatever but you know one of the
comments that was made was yeah yeah it actually goes smallest to largest so you
would do a 4 s 4 TP and not a 4 TP for us