A very, very detailed video on how I built my battery pack for electric skateboard.

hello guys and welcome to my channel if you are looking to build your own battery pack using either 18650 or 700 sells this channel and this video is definitely for you this is a very very long video but very very detailed video on how to build something as beautiful as this right here 12 s 6 p 21 700 molly cells 42 p however the principle is exactly the same building another battery pack we will cover everything from the beginning from just loose cells designing all the way back to the end of actually finalizing and shrink wrapping the battery pack i have split the video into the points so these are the points we're gonna go through very carefully this way you can choose the timing of the video to where you want to be but trust me if you watch this video and want to build a battery you don't have to watch any other video out there because all the information is here an hour and 40 minutes of it so get yourself a cup of coffee and crack home watching hope you like it [Music] hello guys welcome back to my channel um as you guys requested i'm going to start a new series of videos let's build a custom battery pack it's going to be similar to the let's build the custom deck hopefully you're watching that series it's like very short ones not a lot of talking and just like photos and maybe short short clips in between so hopefully enjoying it so now we're going to build a pack uh all in total is going to be 12 s 6p using paths paths battery no i'm joking it's just a it's just a custom wrapper these are 21700s p42s multi cells okay if you guys are interested in like uh different like battery information or excels or whatever not i've got a two videos already on my channel uh one is all about cells it's really good video i think is so much information i put into it so if you like a beginner i want to learn a little bit uh check it out i will leave them in description below in the link and also another video very detailed what tools do you need to actually um build the battery okay so that's it let's crack on okay guys so i got 60 cells in the front of me it's only enough for 5p but i had to change my plans after i broken my deck i'm building a new deck i was going to take 6b so is another sales coming to me but it's not a reason not to start the battery pack so we need to start with is checking your individual cell individual cell voltages and that's what we're going to do with multimeter and yeah it's pretty much an exercise where you go through each cell making sure that is charged correctly normally get it at about 3.4 volt this is the storage charge when you buy the cells that's how they come in and the checked cells you just put them on the side so i'll show it here check 3.4 perfect so we're going to check all of them yeah okay guys so all the cells are 3.4 volts each perfect so next thing we do is we are going to put some protection additional protection on the positive sides of the cell there is already a protective ring inside there that's fine but what we need to do is just to make sure that it doesn't short out because remember the actual body of the cell is negative so anything leading from there to the body will go bang okay so you can buy these uh insulator rings and what you do is you just peel it off and carefully position that insulator ring right in the middle onto the positive protecting the edge so when you got your strip it doesn't rub in into the actual insulation and doesn't spark up there we go so let's do them all now okay guys so all the cells are now uh protected uh with the uh with the rings next thing you do is you need to start creating the p packs so hopefully you already have some sort of design in mind i mean i do a bit of like a uh like scribble of how i will be doing my uh series connectors so how it's gonna look like so you know what you're gonna go for as i said in my previous videos already there's different types of batteries like a flat flat double stack like this or what i need is a half stack p pack design so next step is to i use a uh hot glue gun that's what normally everyone uses unless you want to go really fancy and buy those plastic clips for cells but they take too much space so what i do is i do lay out the cells in the right direction up against something uh straight i'm using my laptop another thing that kind of works fine for me i know you can get like 3d printed uh um cradles for the cells well i'm only building one pack you know so not too often it's not my business so i don't need something um completely printed i use a magnet this is one of these magnets they're quite cheap it's like holding up tools and then i press them all together and this now keeps my cells parallel so i'm gonna do three three three and then when i got two threes done we'll join them together and that's my half stack b pack so i need to make 12 of these because you'll create 12s 6b let's crack on next step you lay out your batteries so this is the way my battery pack is going to look like so one side is ready you figure out your serious connections and depending on how you want them you start gluing the flat packs together to create a single p pack again just a hot glue gun you gotta be fast otherwise the glue will set on a straight surface press them down you're done gluing them together and now just to add a little bit more strength there's a bit of quad glue on the side smear it off and the other side you're done next step guys we're going to cut some fish paper and we're going to protect every single p pack we're going to wrap them with the fish paper first just like so then after we're using a uh 50 millimeter captain tape and we're going to put another skin right over let me show how to do this [Music] yep and now they're going to fit nicely together nice and tight well put a captain tape on it's quite easy i'm sure you know how to do this okay so all the p packs are now protected with the fish paper and also the captain tape lovely jubbly next up guys if you're going to install foam neoprene form inside your enclosure and also on the deck itself this is pretty much what i've done already nice and neat take a time i cannot really teach you how to be neat so just use your creativity plus i have video how i've done this once before this is not a cheap stuff so try to use any parts of it and of course that you can as you can see here i actually used uh parts of it so if you plan it well you can cover quite a lot you almost cannot see the scene okay so this will stop the battery and electronics from bouncing around inside your enclosure and now we're going to plan the battery pack so guys the next step is to actually plan your enclosure so the way i do it is i get everything that's going it's going to have to go inside the enclosure on my bench and then i kind of you know play with it see what's the best way to do it it's like playing in a house you know so i already know that my battery will be um half stack uh 12 s6p so quite a large battery it does fit in this configuration i can use maximum amount of space and enclosure because of the shape of it so you have to try this out guys and this way you can get the biggest battery possible into your build okay so let me show you what i've got on the table here and what to consider so what i got here guys is um obviously the remote you need to consider the receiver of the remote and think where it's going to go also um little bits like switches the power switch where do you want it where will you drill it inside the enclosure so that after nothing is actually hitting or rubbing or it's not in the way of the cables so you kind of have the idea you leave it there you lay it out around the enclosure the way you think is what you wants to go so bms that's quite a large piece so you want to understand where you want your dms how your cable is going to run how you're going to protect the bms and the pesks from each other because bms will heat up i'm not going to use this bms for discharge so it shouldn't heat up too much and then how you're going to control the board meaning how you're going to set uh change the settings of your vesks are you going to be taking the enclosure part every time i'm plugging in delete or you're going to go for something like metapro for instance you know so you need to plan that so pretty much if you plug it where you're going to put it how the cable is going to run also i'm using a dual vesc the original vescs in this build and i have to provide two power connections to the desk so i have to do a splitter that will be then connecting to the battery positive and negative you know to do so i have chosen a 150 amp a um large connector so this should do a really good job it's anti-spark as well i always like to use iron to spark for the last connection to the battery so it nothing goes bang okay so that's a large piece you need to think of it you know cables will come out of its hygiene or wrapping around how long they need to be so this is pretty much the idea i mean if you're gonna go for like leds uh get yourself a um a step down from whatever voltage of your battery is down to the voltage of your lights this one here is um 55 volt to uh 12 volt volt 3 amp this is available on ebay so if you will be running lights fine make sure you know where you're going to put it so you have you know space somewhere in the enclosure if you look around you will find little corners everywhere but always think how is this going to fit how you're going to press it down so it doesn't move around or bubble or jump about in your deck vibration vibration vibration remember about that that's the killer also the cable leads so when you connect your series and you're coming back with your negative and positive towards the ecs waving around the cables in the middle of the pack on the top think about it you know cables rubbing on each other bits and pieces like that i will have a front light that's going to be wired into the battery direct i'm sick of charging the lights and forgetting to charge them so i'm gonna have an additional switch just for the light so that's another thing i need to think about where i'm gonna put it what about the cables at the back how they're gonna run okay and that's pretty much it so next step um i will do is i will create the splitter and um yeah then i will start welding the batteries together and that's probably what we're going to look at making the splitter and soldering uh large cables soldering xt90s or similar a connector so banana plugs all the videos already on my channel take a look okay so that's it next step battery world okay so we're ready to spot weld the p packs these are the packs right here so we're going to connect all the positives negatives together uh before you do that decide what you're going to use as a nickel they come in different thicknesses okay so obviously you decide what nickel you want to use for your application or for your battery so i'm going for 25 millimeter wide at 0.2 this is good for my battery and the first thing to do is come up with the template of the nickel that you're going to weld on using a spot welder by the way i'll have a separate video on this unit here so what i've done is uh just played around with a bit of paper uh trying to cut it as best as i can and as perfect as i can so what you need to do is get the uh bit so that you catch as much surface of the cells on the positive side here as possible but without actually going over this little gap between positive and negative because bear in mind underneath this area here that's the negative of the battery so something like this okay and now we need to cut enough of nickel of that shape to do all the packs p packs so depending on battery you're building obviously that's how many you're going to have a couple extra just in case if something were to go wrong okay so let's start chopping then after you cut just a straight bit using a template you cut the corners off so they all match nicely i'm making 24 of this well for the 12s 6b okay guys so all the nickel is pre-cut i suggest that um you do check once in a while uh that the cuts you're making are still fitting perfectly you know i did take some time and uh it took me three or four goals to actually make the template right i'm happy with what i got you know it's covering as much as possible without you know overhanging uh next thing is be careful with all these little shavings you know clean it up straight away because you will drag it in the house and someone will step on it and these are like extremely extremely sharp you know look very sharp okay next step we're going to do a test weld an easiest way to pick up all the little bits of your workbench it's a strong magnet a little bit slide out you probably won't be able to see what magnet does okay so idea of the test world which i do recommend you guys do is to ensure that your spot welder is set to the setting you require to get a good spot weld without burning through i already have done that for my machine and done a first two p-packs and they came out really really well so just to show you guys so you know i'm running this unit on 4s 2p and they are 90c discharge so i would recommend your try your machine and see what's the best setting is for you so i'll show you what the good world should look like i'm starting started off with 30 yesterday and raise it up so i know my unit works at that particular setting so make sure you keep the probes nice and flat onto the surface clean up the surface and use like an old cell just for the test run let's find a little bit but it's still got some meat on it and we're just going to spot all this okay so in order to see if the world is good try ripping the spot world off as you can see almost got myself it is coming off very very hard and what it did do is leave bits of nickel on the actual cell okay and at the same time ripped the nickel when i was pulling it apart so that's a decent world in my book and yeah we're going to carry on spot welding [Music] so [Music] do [Music] okay guys so all the p packs are now sports welded together next thing is we're going to solder on the series connections and for that we're going to use the 8 gauge cable so before we move on to the next step of this video or the next part of this video and talk more closely about the battery pack and design of it i would like to mention something when it comes to electrical skateboard diy or at least to me it's all about taking your time and attention to the detail especially when it comes to electronics and things like a battery purely is because uh if you install the grip tape incorrectly you can always rip it off and put a new one if you will build your packing correctly most likely will create issues uh most of the times the patch will stop working sometimes it could spark up and really create big big problems for you so especially with the battery pack take your time so what i would recommend you do is definitely treat this as a one-off piece of art it's a treaty battery build like a showroom so if you open up or show someone your enclosure would you be happy or proud to see what's there so this is what i mean by designing the p packs are now welded together as you already know now what you do is you make sure you lay them all out and you come up with the design of your electronics so as you remember my desks are pre-installed onto the heatsink what i've done was i have stuck the xt90s on both sides actually onto the vests so they don't just flop about nice and neat as symmetrical as you can so when you open the battery up it's nice and neat the splitter 150 amp splitter for connecting back to the battery and making the vests live they are or the splitter will be located right here nice and neat underneath the phase wires for the modis so that took a bit of planning i was playing around with these cables and connectors before i actually soldered everything together just to see how am i going to plan this all out so this is how my vision is for this part of electronics here also the uh eight gauge cables they're going to span out and connect to the battery pack the length of them how you're going to connect them how is it going to look like after you're done plan it out do you have space is it going to be all neat it's going to be touching each other is it going to actually hit any sharp corners or not and so forth still on so for instance with the bms i've realized the smart smart bms that i've chosen first for this build is actually not going to fit i had to increase the thickness of the foam gasket on my deck video by the way is in my channel my channel already so i've purchased another a different smart vms which is 20 amp i don't care about this just because i'm not going to use it so same with the bms you think of it how you're gonna run it how your cable is gonna go which way is it gonna be turned which way is it going to actually sit in your enclosure which way you're gonna run your bms cables so we get to this um further down the video when we connect the bms but for now my point is work on your design before actually fixing anything down so next step will be connecting the b-packs in series but before you do that before you weld stuff or solder stuff make sure you got plan in place so i will be using a heat dissipating gasket between the vesks and the uh bms i also do know that the bluetooth it does have little place so i'm probably gonna be fixing that on the side of the enclosure right here i also know that i still have enough space for my switches on this side for my lights and turn on and the board on and off so when you're in the stage where you know everything fits and you got all your cables rotations right so you don't have like really stupid crosses or stretch the cables this is when you go to the next step and your next step is to create a brick that's pretty much tape top pack off uh p-packs ready for the series connection it's pretty much easier to handle you can turn it around uh the way you require when you work on it and plus it gives you the idea of how this break is going to look like after it's assembled so let me explain to you uh what all these numbers here are all about so in my instance let's repeat one more time we got half stack at pack we've got 12 s 6 p battery pack so six cells in parallel and we got 12 of these d packs in series okay so the numbers you see let's just for people who don't know or not sure let's go through how the voltage or how the uh the the electricity flow is gonna work through these packs because it's going to kind of explain uh or make it clear what we're trying to achieve here uh while using the series connections so we got p packs one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve okay so these are the numbers one to twelve so we got 12 p packs that's why it's 12 s 6p now on this side here this is where i'm planning to have my common negative meaning this is where the negative is gonna then go onto my desks okay so this is why i've got my negative connection uh to the main plug that connects to vesks a bit longer and this is the way it's going to travel all the way around negative so battery negative this is all going to finish with a battery common positive on the last 12 d pack and that's what i have marked battery master negative and battery master positive okay so now let's think about the flow master negative the flow is through the p then it needs to jump over to the next one and this is where you mark the position of your serious connection through the p-pack jump series connection through the p pack number two jump over to the p to the p pack number three through pack three over to four through four over to five through five over to six through six and now we're going to create well not now now but we're going to create a long series connector from positive to negative pretty much replicated what's here is just from brick to brick now we've got positive to negative through p pack number seven jump over to eight through number eight jump over to nine through 9 jump over to 10 through 10 jump to 11 from 11 or through 11 jump over to 12 and only 12 bang that's where we stop and that's your flaw that's the positive so this is how you're creating your flow hopefully this makes sense guys i'm not a professional in uh teaching people how to build the batteries but this is what i'm doing this is my scenario yeah so this is what i'm going to do and this is how i figured out my s connections i know how many series i need to do the next step let's create a brick when working on the battery always make sure you check and check and triple check everything okay so i've got all my p packs off of one of the size of the battery in the front of me make sure that you have alternative sides on one of the side of the block so pretty much negative positive negative positive negative positive just in case if something went wrong when he was moving it around and you got it wrong way around in front of you get the p packs nice and straight in front of you just like so keep them as tight as you can as straight as you can because you will want this to be nice and straight then using the captain tape we're going to stick them together remember if you are following the double stack configuration like mine you will have this little uh i don't know how to tell how to call them uh like figure yeah so do not go over it just creating a straight line so continue replicating that design in my instance i need it because this is where the battery pack is going to sit inside the actual deck cutout so take a time down brush and try to get this as tight as you can okay so now you have two bricks you can actually handle them a little bit easier they don't fall apart you got everything mocked up you understand where your serious connections need to be because you've marked it all up and you went through it over and over and over and over so let's talk about serious connections so what you can use for serious connections the most important thing to know is how much flex does your board have does your deck have and your enclosure has as well because if you 100 sure you got no flex whatsoever on your board you can go and do this the easiest way is pretty much using the nickel strip and a sport welder and get your series connections just spot welded brilliant easiest way out however if you have any concern that you might have some flex you need to make this battery pack a bit flexible so it does flex with the with the deck and the enclosure and does not actually put the nickel to strain and the well supposed to strain because sooner or later they will pop off and you will lose the uh the battery pretty much okay so what you can use if you need to create a flexible connection is number one quite common and something i tried using for this pack is the tinned copper braid this one here in the front of you is 19 by two millimeters that can take 150 amp constant so beautiful the way i thought doing this and this is where you can see a bit of a battle marks here is to connect the series connections like so and solder them onto the nickel however and this would give me the flex that i need however i tried just so i know that i can relate this information to you guys because i actually did try i tried um every soldering iron that i had home up to a 200 amp um sorry 200 watt solder 9 and i realized that if i carry on i will overheat the cells too much so i stopped and abandoned this idea trying to rip off the so i can still peel it back it's quite tough but i can rip it apart for 50 minutes man sorry 50 seconds almost a minute with a big iron i don't know i'm not gonna use the braid what you can do is create tabs and then solder on the braid onto the tabs but it's entirely up to you i'm not gonna do that another thing you can do is you can use thick enough silicone copper cable and create a series connections by going across from b pack to p back however you need to remember to give it enough slack so when the pack moves you got a bit of movement a lot of times if you do have space at the top of your battery and so between the battery pack and the actual enclosure what you can do is create your series connections like a little loop so if we got the first one here from feedback one to be back to you go on the side and do something like this this way if he needs to move well it's perfect you got the movement in my case i don't have any space so i need to come up with something else okay so this is pretty much where it's going to be i got the um cable pre-cut to a certain length as i said i'm using the 8 gauge this one is about 120 amp constant and this is how the series connection is going to work and now we're just going to make some tabs okay so i have now finished uh almost finished all the serious connections of my pack so this brick here well one half of the battery now does have all the series connections on so just to show you guys how flexible this pack will be so here we go as you can see it does move quite a lot well it's definitely enough for my application i don't need more flex than this my deck is not going to flex more than that with the uh half stack pack what will stop the movement is actual design of the p packs because they're locked in together there's only that much movement you can get on here okay so this is what i need for my board if you were not looking for a really crazy a flexible pack which is still very possible to build but you're looking for something like mine almost no flex but still very good flex just enough to make sure that the series connections will not pop off this is what you should do so let me show you what i've done i've made this type of series connections okay this is nickel and i've used eight gauge cable which is rated to 120 amp constant discharge or charge whatever discharge flow whatever you want to say and it's sold on to these tabs the tabs are then are getting welded on to the pack as you can see so essentially i've got double plate of nickel on the p pack because first one is to create the p pack second one is actual series connection so the reason why i done this is because i can put as much heat as i want onto this plate when i'm soldering making sure that the solder is flowing everywhere i need it to flow to get this cable nicely fixed however you control the heat so after you're done you still get very nice flexibility on this cable which is the actual series connection there we go and the heat doesn't go to the cells win-win so what i thought i've got just one more series connection to put on this pack right here and i left it out for you guys just to show you how i've done this if you don't want to see this just fast forward to the next section of this video which will be installation off the bms so this is how i make the series connection so step number one guys is we're going to cut up nickel i'm using the 19 by 0.2 millimeter nickel pure nickel so it's not steel covered with nickel is actually pure nickel and we're going to make it to the shape of your p-pack so that's exactly what i've done i'm sure they have to teach you how to do this it's just pretty much working with scissors okay so we got that brilliant so now we need to do is we need to uh make the cable so this is eight gauge cable i've already measured out what i need for my series connection not too long i'm trying to get um at least four packs covered so when i sold the wrong at least four packs will have this soldering part across them so that's quite a lot so the way i do this is just a really sharp knife i've marked up what i needed already and then i just run the knife all the way around nice and neat just like so then i slice it on both sides sometimes i do two three slices the reason for it is because the silicone gets stuck to the uh actual cable brakes when you're trying to yank it off you kind of mess it all up so this is the way i do it just peel it back slice by slice now i'm going to roll all the strands clockwise make it nice and tight it's a big cable guys it is a big cable but 120 amp that's perfect that's exactly what i need i don't need more than that that's a lot of power you will never draw 120 app constantly for too long even if you spike for a second or two at 150 it'll be absolutely fine okay so this is your series connection now we've got the uh the nickel cut up so now we know that we're going to cut the nickel at the top to create this little uh i don't know saddle whatever you want to call it this bit here rolled you don't have to do this but that's just me it keeps the soul intact it keeps the solar from running away so we know it's going to be right at the top this area first thing we do is we're going to roughen up the nickel because solder that stick much much nicer so i'm using the 80 grit sandpaper just to roughen this up before i cut it you can do it after you cut it but it's just easier to do it this way now we're going to cut the nickel i'm going to cheat a little bit so i'm going to use uh two bits at the same time scissors you can use normal scissors guys the nickel is quite easy to cut to be honest with you so i'm just cutting enough to hug the cable but at the same time to have enough meat here and here to actually zap back to the battery okay so now nickel is cut just making sure which way do i roll it now what i've got i've got this uh tool here this is for bearings but you can use like a phillips screwdriver so you put this down like this on the bench and you roll i know you cannot see probably let me see if i can do it this way so you can see it so you kind of roll the nickel the cut bit over something rounded like i've got this tool here so you create this with me yeah okay so we do the same for the other side perfect okay so we got the nickel ready at the same time we already got soldering line warming up guys i'm using 200 watt soldering iron it's well i'm just sick of waiting for stuff to get molted and uh i rather control the heat i kind of take it away from the soldering place not to overheat stuff but this is uh 20 pound joby from ebay chinese made but does the job big thing so that's already uh warming up ready for me to go i do use acid soldering acid for this you don't have to you can use whatever hell you use to solder so i'm going to apply this into this little groove and on this side as well as you can see guys as i promised quite a detailed video eh so you need to turn anywhere else you can build the whole battery just watching this video so done that now this is uh what i found to work really well remember we rolled these strands on the cable clockwise yeah so that's exactly what we're gonna do to actually roll the cable into this little saddle so i'm pushing it up against it and now i'm rolling it now when you're pretty much there you can now pinch the bit that you did cut use gloves if you don't want this acid all over your hands i'm so used to this that i don't but you should okay so now what we got is a piece of nickel and a cable married look at that doesn't go anywhere perfect now we do another one or the other side roll it so you got all the strands nice and straight pinch it and now just before we're going to solder this we're just going to make sure that we're not too far apart so make sure this is the serious connection you need to apply this because if you chuck this in the wrong place that's gonna spark up okay so this is definitely the one this is why marking up the battery is very important you know the back pack number and also where the series connector should go so this is where we're going just trying to make sure if i should maybe pull this apart so it looks like i just want to pull this apart just slightly and this is a beauty of creating this little pocket on a nickel because it kind of stays all together without being sold it some people like solder directly on the flat nickel that's fine works well but this is much neater because you can actually hold it okay so we know this works so now what i do i do use a really cheap stanley vise okay i'm going to fix this bit right in the middle not too close to actual voice so the heat doesn't get pulled away make sure it's nice and level try to do it it's a bit awkward for me because i'm filming but i think you'll get the idea so nice and straight okay so ready to solder now with solder i have tried different types of solder really expensive solder this game i think this was like really expensive but god knows why because it's it's quite hard to work with so i would suggest go for something that has a 40 60 ratio yeah so you want quite a bit more lead in it because this solder will run at a lower heat but still not too low for it to melt from the battery usage so now we're doing this we're going to well sold this in now you need patience and well just be careful so warming this up now you'll see how much solder is going to be gone [Music] inside [Music] please keep on feeding it it's going [Music] you see what i'm doing with this uh 200 amp 200 watt sorry iron i put it away sometimes because it's so thought that i kind of push it away it doesn't overheat the nickel i rather do that than wait for it to heat up the multi angle uh voice is very handy because you can actually manipulate where the solder goes don't go too close to the actual cable because you still want it to stay flexible but do enough so that you have solder that covered the entire uh cable ashram so it becomes solid it becomes one with this nickel there we go sometimes she does it doesn't want to stick to the nickel too much just a bit of more acid what a mask guys because this uh acids um smoke is nasty there we go this one went up again there we go now it's taken nicely into the nickel that's it one side is done [Music] [Music] so what are you looking for guys you're looking for flooding all the strands of the cable completely with the solder so it becomes one so from this point here onwards everything is flooded with solder also you want to look for that nice connection between the cable and the solder around it to back to the nickel so you got this nice little joint right there so it kind of sticks right to it see nice and neat now you don't have to do this guys this is just me but what i do i use a bit of a brick and clutch cleaner and i actually do clean up all these burn ups from the um acid or if you're using the uh flux so i clean this up because i want the connections nice and shiny like from like on the pack you see there no one will ever see them it's just me i just want them neat you want to get them to a you know prey in your state because obviously they've experienced a lot of heat but you still can so now i'm using a dremel and i'm just going to clean this all up [Music] so this gives me a chance to actually see if the soldering took it's definitely not called solder it's definitely stuck and it still does have perfect movement so yes and the the surface of the uh nickel look this is massive so that's going to be one good connection so next step well the next step is um to zap the freshly made series connector to the pack i'm using the k world and that's what i do like to use it's powerful enough to go through one nickel straight second nickel straight into the packs the batteries have a bit tired now i went they i haven't charged them since i actually uh done the p pack so i'm gonna go to uh well i would say 50 at 60 joel's 60 jaws will be fine so i i do use the uh the pedal just just i don't know it's just me guys i'm using the pedal so just making sure that i got the correct area of the battery pack so nothing sparks up guys be careful always check triple check quadruple check what you're doing so you line up where you want to be roughly now we're just going to zap the first pack so it stays there stays there next one let's have this one okay guys so serious connections are now complete and if they fit nicely into the deck just enough space uh to get the uh fish paper all the way around them try to do your series connections closer to the deck so when the deck flexes downwards the battery opens up so the connection series connection is higher or away from the bottom of the board i know that makes sense so closer to the deck yeah now i'm going to use exactly the same principle to do my uh uh connection between the six and seven because if you remember yeah we went through series through series through series through series through series through now from here we need to jump over to this brick here so we're going to install the cable just like that they're going to do that for us and that's going to be 8 gauge cable as well so i've used exactly the same principle guys exactly the same nice and solid connection that could be spot welded onto the pack without overheating them and tons of solder to keep it all together nice and strong so that's it one to another bush this is our series so i'm going to finish this off and we're going to crack on with the bmf so stay tuned okay guys so now bms the battery management system okay this is a box like this with tons of cables sticking out but don't worry after this is done you will know exactly what you're looking at so they come in different varieties tiny different s values smart different discharges so let's just go through this step by step bms can be used for charge only most of them are charge and discharge so pretty much the pms will control the discharge of the battery and also the charge of the battery however i do not personally use the bms for discharge i only use them for charge the different opinions out there uh mine is what's the point have another choke on a system when i have a quality ecs or vescs in my case original trampa benjamin vera vesks and they will control the discharge also when you have a bms that is charge only it is thinner and smaller so what you see in front of you is uh 12 spms's yeah from the same company both charge and discharge however one is 60 amp that's the thicker one and this one is 20 amp that's the thinner one so i went for the smallest they make uh because that's the space i need so the smaller the better for me bms wise bear in mind that bms's uh come for the battery s value so if your battery is 10s you need to get yourself a 10s bms 12s and so on so forth that's gonna obviously affect amount of cables you need to connect to your packs okay so as simple as that uh well they do range all the way down to small little things like that these are from uh slick revolution boards i believe s6s anyway so let me show you uh what i'm going to do and what you should do and um we'll carry on from there okay so i have already figured out uh how my cable is gonna run and guys we already covered that in the video so my bms is gonna sit right over the uh desks and i'm using this uh material this is the same material they use for the actual uh motherboards and electronics i forgot how it's called but you can google that so i'm gonna have that sitting there just to give me some sort of protector you don't have to sorry forgot to mention that you also have smart bmses and normal bms smart bms comes with the bluetooth module that gets wired in and you can actually see your battery status on your smartphone and that's what i'm using so my bmi is going to sit right there okay and then we need to connect the bms itself please check the um manual that comes from your bms manufacturer but the one i've got and most of the times that is the case you've got cable sticking out of the bms and they normally marked up one is b minus this is your battery common negative okay and this is what we're going to connect together with the uh negative cable that's going to bring the common or master negative back to the vesks okay at the same time you've got the charge minus and it says c c minus this is your negative to your charging port which will cover in this video a bit later i'll show you what i'm going to use regarding the cables that actually sends the p packs okay so this is how this works you need to get each p pack connected to the bms bear in mind there is one negative cable that comes from the bms and that is going to go onto your b-pack number one negative side and you also pick up next cable is your positive of p pack number one so that's it's a little bit different and that's the only difference with the p pack number one you pick up negative and positive from there onwards you're only picking up a positive side only from an xp pack so p pac2 positive be pack three positive be back four positive and so on so on so on so on okay when you get to your last pack which is in my instance and number 12 because the 12s pack it gets the red cable on the positive so what i have done as you can see not to confuse myself later on i have marked up where my tabs need to be installed by tabs and meaning a bit of nickel like that spot weld it onto a positive side of the battery on the positive spot weld it i'm going to bend it over just like that to the top of the packs so then we can solder this sensor cables off of the bms so what i've done so i know where to spot weld the uh nickel i've marked myself with the letter t where the tab is going to go so let's go over this so on ppac number one we need to connect positive and negative yep so we're gonna have tab and the tab be pack number two it's only positive tab three tab four tab so you pretty much pick up the positive side of each p pack and that's where the key these cables gonna go to okay so now we're going to cut a load of little tabs we're going to spot weld them where the tabs gonna have to go we're going to bend them over on the top of the packs and then we can and have to protect the bare open connections with some fish paper i'll cover this with you so hopefully that explains the bms situation and yeah it's actually quite straightforward by the way some of the bms's uh or a lot of them do come with the temperature sensor but this temperature sensor is only active when you actually use the bms on discharge so i'm just gonna have to yeah leave it there somewhere inside the enclosure nice and safe okay so let me do all this and we'll check on with the tutorial i do cut the uh tabs nice and neat make them nice and round but so the safe so they don't cut anything through inside the enclosure these two tabs are nice and straight okay so i have done uh the tabs on one of the bricks and this is what we're going to aim for the tabs welded a bit of fish paper which one of them to make them nice and safe so this is the ab brick number one so if you guys wish i'll show you how i do the brick nice and simple [Music] okay so both brakes and i'll have the tabs on for the bms and also have already zapped the last connection the series connection between one brick to another now we need to protect all of this and in order to do so i've already cut up some fish paper that's gonna be well pretty much the shape that i've got already going here just like that and then captain tape just to keep it nice and safe you don't want this touching each other when it's inside the enclosure let's do this [Music] [Music] oh [Music] okay the packs are now wrapped up i have left the main negative open and the main positive open however when i'm ready to connect six to seven okay so i'm going to zap this one up okay spots welded together pretty much the battery it's almost done let's connect the all solder on the uh bms sensor tabs guys the actual cables okay so i've got the harness now completed my harness is we're looking at here over here is my negative main negative that goes to the vesks also i have so i have sold it on a 12 gauge cable this is going to pick up the pms and another cable just for lights just in case if i need it for the positive pretty much the same i've got the common positive off of the main splitter also positive just in case if i want to run the light and another positive here that you can see is to pick up the positive connection to the charger okay now so we're going to zip this all up using my cables and wrap up the battery [Applause] okay so we're ready to solder the cables from the bms the sensor cables onto the tabs the first thing you do guys is roughen up the tabs with the sandpaper that will allow the solder the stick on this very nicely so preteen in the uh bms sensor tabs don't put too much heat in them in and out quick for the next part guys uh cut yourself up loads of captain tape bits because we're going to dress up those bms cables nice and neatly okay guys so most importantly about running the cables for the bms sensors okay you should not or try not to cross the cables okay so let's run it through one more time i know it's been called a bms stage so if you missed it go back to bms and i will explain everything one more time in the video however now we've got the tabs they are already pretend so the black one the main negative first white one to the p pack positive and then every single cable after that is picking up the positive of each pack make sure you get them right one two three four five six seven eight nine ten mark the packs up it's important you cannot mix up the cables yeah the bms will be calculating the voltage p pack by p pack in the order numerical order the way it is connected as you've done the series connections okay so we're going to get them as nice and neat as we can without crossing the cables if you have to cross the cable use some fish paper and protect the cable from cables if it's 90 degree so it stops them rubbing together and the vibration breaking through because you will connect the bad cables together and you don't want to do that okay that's when boom happens so what i'll do is i will just carry on do what i have to do otherwise you're just gonna be staring at the screen for an hour waiting for me to do it nice and neat when i'm done i will let you know and show you what i've done before i start i will captain tape the p packs together so they are solid and they are not moving about okay i'm just gonna do it right in between the p packs [Music] [Music] okay so we're now going to uh solder first of the tabs and also extend the cables before you do that guys unplug the vms the cables are now stuck down they're not gonna go nowhere so unplug the bms guys there we are done our battery sensor cables are now installed nice and neat uh so we're gonna do is uh before we uh tape this all down or actually if you're sure that that everything is fine i mean change the cables back down again just one more time just to ensure that you look to the manual and you run the cables as per manual negative p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 so on so on and all the way down to the positive on the 12 p pack okay if you're ready tape it all down however i will going to test this out okay guys so the way to you test this is make sure that you're using a really thin tip tester so i got the voltmeter the multimeter right there uh i think i probably should set it to 200 okay so you get the uh black one to the negative on the connector make sure you don't touch them together or will you will short the battery out and then carefully start introducing one p at a time so next one up should be 3.4 volt check 3.4 next one over will be double so it should be 6.8 well 6.9 fine next one 6.9 plus three point four ten four next one should be about fourteen fourteen next one seventeen five ish seventeen 75 next one 20 odd yeah 21 next one 24-4 yeah 24-5 fine next one about 28 that's the one then uh 30 odds 31 6 then yeah 35 38.6 and now 42.2 and that's the battery on a uh charge mark on a storage charge 42.2 okay all checks out so our p packs are connected correctly so every time you introduce a next speed it increases the value on the voltage good to go let's tape this all up well i just turned the lights off and i think you can see this much better now because before it was too shiny so we go just quick overlook of how i ran the sensor cables before i tape them down okay so fish paper over the tabs where we had the connectors and couple layers of captain tape nice and safe so next step okay guys so just before we move on with the next part of this video i just wanted to let you know i do really appreciate all your comments and all the negative and positive criticism on the pictures and stuff i upload on like instagram and facebook so when i uploaded a photo of this battery pack someone and thank you very much i did point out the fact that when i have joined uh the cables uh together uh even though they are heat shrink shrunk uh and they are protected they're too close so the suggestion was to move them apart or protect them with the fish paper so i'm going to do this little alteration follow that because i'm not sure if it's true or not but why not to do it if someone has a concern so okay so what we're going to do is a bit of a surgery right around the area where i have extended the cables i'm going to just open this up now we're going to cut a piece of fish paper wide enough to cover this whole area and we're going to weave it through this cables [Music] and now we're going to tape it down so there was another suggestion on my instagram and i do appreciate it guys really really do you know the divider between the two bricks what i've done is fish paper captain tape fish paper captain tape i think it's plenty but because it's raised with me and it's a good suggestion i believe and already got the material anyway i was asked to install a dividing wall between the uh bricks because that's when i have my serious connections just in case if for whatever reason that will break through and uh the serious connections will touch i would like to mention that the way i have designed the position of the uh series connections is that when they do touch they actually touch silicone cable to silicone cable so they will never touch metal to metal if they break through they will attach silicon on the silicon however i already got this material that i'm using for under the bms this is same material that's being used for a creation of the uh pcb boards motherboards uh it's non-conductive it's a heat transferring i don't remember the name but if you google or or yeah material for pcb boards and that's the one that i've got [Music] so if anything to break through you will not touch the series connections now a bit of tape and we crank on with bms okay so next step guys we're going to connect the b minus to the bms and i will run this um by you a bit later if you're still interested and you're not falling asleep as yet during this video is how i've done the wiring harness so i do have a 12 gauge cable that comes off the master negative off of the battery pack and this is what's going to go onto the bms negative b minus so this cable from here to the bms just like that [Music] okay so just back from work too excited didn't change yet straight into my garage because right now is the best part of the build of the battery when you find out that everything is good we've done such a great job all the checks all the testing guys it should not go anyway but this step working really well so let's represent by the way who is still not out of all my viewers on escape freedom facebook group which is my group join guys it's really good very friendly awesome people so next step so the next step after we connected the negative of the battery to the uh bms b minus you are pretty much ready to plug in your bluetooth module if it's a uh a smart bms guys go for smart bms it's so much nicer you can control your your packs meaning you can see what's going on with them so now we're going to connect the balance cables into the plug remember we have removed it for soldering make sure you get it the right way around okay now you can see a little blue light right there bms is now live bear in mind the bms stays live yeah or to all the times okay so we uploaded the bms app turn this on your bluetooth module will light up as soon as defines the connectivity and bang we got the app now battery state fingers crossed you got all your parameters on the screen and this is the most important part there we go we've got all 12 p-packs with all the voltages at 3.5 this is the perfect indication that you have done a great job and your battery is now ready to be charged beautiful so glad to see this you got tons of things in the apps but you can check your own app whatever yours is so [Music] okay guys so i hope the pictures were self-explanatory if not i will tell you what i've done so far so i am using the xp 13 2 pin uh charging plug it's about three maybe four pounds on ebay the benefits are it's plastic so when you put the cover on there's no chance you can shut anything out also it does have a nice quality it's ip68 so is pretty much waterproof so when the cap is on and it is on your enclosure like that nothing you know gets in it plus it's blue a matches my boat perfectly so a couple of things guys it does have markings one and two so always follow the markings it doesn't matter which one but as long as you follow it through so if you choose number one for negative which i've done you do the same for the positive is number two i've installed the part for the charger already one and two so it is a positive negative however i do strongly recommend guys that you do run the polarity test just in case so get your multimeter connect the one to negative knowing that you'd have done number one as a negative and then you connect the uh positive obviously to positive it's 50 volt as you can see if it would be a vice versa and you let's say you have made a mistake uh or your wires are crossed a little bit you will have a negative reading minus okay so you don't want that so here we go so i know that my polarity is correct uh the battery cables already have done what i've decided to do is uh have a breakup between the actual charging port and my battery so when the charging port installed on the enclosure you can disconnect and take the battery out if you need to i've put a male connectors onto the charger charging port itself and the female connectors on the actual battery hold on what is it uh there we go so the actual uh bms and the battery the reason for it that because that's where the power is you know that's what's live all the time so you probably won't expose bits on the side that are not live okay so just out of curiosity let's measure the um voltage on the battery itself before we start to charge it should be roughly around this storage charge about 42 41 volt there we go 42.1 volt perfect so my positive negative is correct as well so now most important and most exciting part we're going to actually charge so i'm plugging in my uh charging port and the reason why i went for the straight connectors i actually did set up everything um with the xt60 at the start but then i realized because i'm using a smaller size i this connector actually doesn't fit through the hole and the reason it's called um the 13 is because the it's 13 millimeters so when i charge the battery because i want to change the battery before i finish it all off like putting in the uh hit um shrink just to make sure everything is fine and i want my um the port to be not installed as yet because i'm still trying to figure out how i'm going to do everything i got the port i got the switch for the actual desks and i also going to have a switch for my lights because i'm going to wire my lights so i want to have this flexibility of testing the battery first and then deciding what i'm going to put it all onto the enclosure but that's for the separate video by the way wiring the lights i'm not gonna use the battery powered light it's actually gonna be wired to the battery and i think it's the best way forward i'm gonna have this in a different video so let's crack on positive to positive negative to the bms negative there we go i already got this plastic cover taped up to the bms so fingers crossed uh let's um plug it all in one one okay just one more time just one more check guys always check it doesn't hurt to check just checking that number one number two is still correct on my charging port 42 yep it is correct okay so for the first time exciting very exciting one and two you shouldn't be able to plug it the wrong way around because this is the way this uh the charger charging port sorry is uh designed you can only slide it the correct way around okay okay i can hear someone oh i can hear a fan going in my charger yeah very nice he's got a nice little cooling fan so the battery is now charging perfect first time nothing sparked up well i guess we're good to go so we're pretty much there guys i know it's a long video but hey well you have to go anywhere else all the information is here in this video so i'm going to leave this on the charge i will always look after the batteries doesn't matter if i build them or someone else or i bought the lipos always always check up on your batteries don't leave them alone charging never at the same time i do have my trusted smoke sensor right there just in case if something goes wrong to tell me something went wrong okay so now let's check the app and see what the app is showing keep on checking the battery guys uh just to make sure that all the cells are charging nicely and balanced out well yep that's what i'm doing so far so good so fingers crossed i'm going to finish that off well pretty much there already okay guys so my battery is still charging four and a half hours later we're at point at 4.13 volts on each p pack which is quite nice they balanced really really nicely um i'm not going to let this battery charge by itself so i'm going to sit next to it waiting for it to finish the first initial cycle so while i'm waiting for it i thought i'll show you or tell you what cable sizes i have used across this battery build so you kind of know so for the series connections i have used the 8 gauge pure copper silicon coated cables good quality so all my series connections 8 gauge and then i have used 8 gauge to come out of the battery the main positive negative out of the battery are the 8 gauge and they all go into 150 amp um xt 150 and spark plug only charging port itself i have used the 16 gauge up to the banana connectors right there and then from banana connectors to the bms and also back positive to the battery itself i have used the 12 gauge okay you don't have to i could have used 16 all the way through but just the way i've decided to do it also i have used some 16 gauge cables positive negative just if i decide to wire in some light which i will do front and back will be wired i'm just tired of charging those uh batteries on a uh a portable light as for the uh negative and positive uh to the bms they are 12 gauge as well and well that's it really so that's what we got on the mortise i've got the original trumpervesques those are 10 gauge on the face cables so that's pretty much the variety of cables hopefully that was useful to you guys okay so it's twelve o'clock uh midnight the battery now finally stopped charging five hours twelve minutes uh the cells are at four twenty 22 419 so average 4.0 well perfect everything is good um yeah so ready to wrap this all up make it pretty and yeah good to go while i was waiting i've done the um bms so i wrapped it up and captain tape protected the connectors with the fish paper and also on the back we've got that plastic that's going to segregate the bms from the vests okay in the morning we're going to heat shrink it and put a little logo on it that's one thing to mention so after i have charged the battery for the first time yesterday i have checked my uh balancing on the app so let's take a look as you can see some of the p packs was not as balanced as others so pretty much they have difference in the voltage of them the beauty of the smart bms is that you can actually choose a static balancing on it so no charge involved leave it there and the bms that's what it does it drains the batteries that are too high and uh brings them to the level required and then you charge it again so this is what i have done and it's looking much much better and now i'm going to charge them up and hopefully they all come up to 4.2 volt ish on each uh p pack but next step while it's charging we're going to wrap this back up and we're pretty much done the shrink wrap in my case we're going to go for blue well that's the color code of the board so why not well it's simple you pretty much slide it over the um the battery and you shrink it all up yeah so make sure everything is nice and neat everything is taped up by the way just a quick one i have also taped up the temperature sensor from the uh bms because if i realized it doesn't matter if you use it on charge or discharge you can still see the temperature reading of the sensor so while you're riding you can see how hot your battery is so that's quite cool so talking to some of my colleagues of mine and my esc let's go skateboard friends they do recommend to leave about 40 millimeters worth of shrink wrap over the size of the pack itself because obviously shrink wrap will decrease in size was come to voice if you got a little bit of leftover you can cut it up or cut it off okay so let's do that this is the beauty of having all the plugs on everything you can imagine especially the charging port so you can have a battery out of the uh enclosure ah that's beautiful eh by the way guys if you're just watching this video for the first time and don't know what i'm all about i've made this myself all the videos on my channel beautiful eh so the enclosure is now separate and the next step would be to go all over the whole lot just to make sure you're happy with everything everything is sealed everything is taped top the whole pack is looking neat yeah your bms is looked after it's all taped up beautiful i think this came out quite nicely and now we're going to put a um shrink over it okay so piece of uh heat shrink right over the pack 40 millimeters extra on both sides [Applause] [Applause] even hold the egg on is blue color coding let's set it on a bit of a less heat nice and slow okay beautiful so the battery pack is now fully sealed and done finito the last thing to do is to represent now let's tag it escape freedom beautiful and of course made in england well it is that's what i worked on it so here we go guys better than manufactured made home yes it takes time but it's absolutely possible and this is it for this video guys as you can see if you got the patience you can make something as beautiful as this battery pack by yourself home more than happy with these guys and hopefully you are as well it's a lengthy video but all information is provided so please build safely please ride safely and most importantly love life i see you very soon in my next video all the best

Channel: Pavel Garmas

Views: 57,870

Rating: 4.8963733 out of 5

Keywords: How to build a battery, skateboard battery, how to install bms, best battery, esk8 battery pack, 21700 cells, 12S6P battery pack, battery pack DIY, spot welder, how to spot weld battery pack, electric scateboard battery, electric mountainboard battery, best battery build, building the battery home, how to design skateboard battery, how to solder the battery, what is series connection, best battery bms, smart bms, trampa, bioboards, lacroix, milicell, 18650 battery pack

Id: 7QjO90LG67g

Length: 102min 37sec (6157 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020