How to properly solder 18650 batteries, fuses, & busbars

she want to do a real quick video on how to properly solder 18 650s and I know there's a bunch of videos on this and you can take or leave the information I'm going to share with you but I've been doing this for a very long time long before it was popular and I see some of the things out there on the web and online and it works sure it works it's equivalent to using a sledgehammer as a finish nailer inside your house or you know using a pneumatic hammer to hang a picture the right tool for the right job extremely important so this little station eco is a top of the line brand this cost a hundred bucks Amazon Prime and it came with a free pair of clippers so uh our side cutters so well worth the money adjustable temperature extremely well regulated you can see here's the end of it let me get it to focus because the tip is equally important you can see it's what they call a chisel tip it's not a straight point like a pin point it's more of a flat head screwdriver style and that is extremely important because it helps get the heat from the soldering iron to whatever you're soldering so not only do you need an adjustable temperature base unit but you need the copper tip for the job the only time I ever change tips is when I'm working on a project where I need to use a different tip so I'm doing extreme precision work and need the pinpoint tip or I need a lower heat spread across a wider surface area so I used the FET or chisel head tip but you can see this thing's heated up and you can adjust the temperature by holding the enter button and it'll start flashing it goes up to 890 9 degrees and that is in Fahrenheit so that's as high as this one goes in normal mood so after you set it now you'll watch it'll climb all the way up on the 18 650s I use it at 800 degrees it's plenty hot enough but Sam soldering copper you know the thick copper busbars then I may have to send it up to 800 degrees or if you push and hold the UP button it goes into calibration mode and in that mode you can use your temperature sensor and then calibrate your heating iron so let's say I set it to 700 degrees and then I take the temperature reading I calibrate it and say oh it's not 700 it's only 500 so I'm overclocking the soldering station so to speak but without further ado I'm gonna go ahead and stick it in the camera holder and give you my rundown on how to properly solder so again the proper tools that does include the proper saw solder itself and this number here is the most important do not buy a thick solder you want a very fine very thin solder so you can control the flow and then with the cells this is my first time ever trying to do it on camera so literally I have alcohol and just a wipe here so I use my finger just grab a little solder paste dab it on there is a such thing as too much flux or a soldering paste you can overdo it you really only need a little bit and all we're doing right now it's pre tinning the cells so we're gonna put a tiny little spot of solder just enough to hold the fuse wire in place and then after we tack the fuse in place and put it across the busbar then you do one final round to make sure you don't end up with a cold joint after you've finalized your joint you go back and check the continuity with your multimeter but make sure that's all in the shot all right so it's still set to 800 degrees we've got them a little roll of solder sometimes I'll cut it and hold it most of the time I just kind of arc it up like this and you'll see how very little solder we actually need I don't have the clock going but I'm sure somebody's gonna clock this and it takes tiny amount of time so I'm gonna stick the tip on kind at an angle because you saw it's got that groove on there and that help spreads the heat from the tip of the soldering iron onto the cell I'll stick it on there hold it from maybe a second just enough to get that flux that paste heated up and moving around and then I'll stick the solder right at the tip where it meets the cell and it literally melts and runs away and then when I lift the iron up I'm left with a bright shiny pool of solder and that's what you want and I'm not editing this you can see there's no solder on these if you're holding it for a few seconds and the solder is not flowing then you may need to turn the heat up a little bit and then finish the stack or you can see I've got a beautiful shining a little dot there and that is all that I need to hold my fuse in place so I'm pretending it but you'll see I should let me hook up the thermometer real quick you'll see how fast well how little it actually heats up and then how fast it actually cools back down so let's do this real quick you can see me see if I can get it in the shot here all right so here's my probe you can see when I pinch it goes I'm kind of hard to see the meter but you guys can see it there so that I've not perfected my YouTube setup here but so this is with no solder at all so I'm just gonna take the heat gun I've got a little wet sponge there just to wipe the end of the tip off keep it nice and clean so if I hold this on the cell make sure it keeps contact with it and then I stick my iron on there and I'll count this out loud well count to five one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four one thousand five one thousand and then look how quick it cools back down now admittedly the tip was not directly on the end of the probe so we'll do another one with the tip right on the end of the probe oh one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four one thousand five one thousand so you can see that time had crept up to nearly five hundred degrees Fahrenheit but look how fast it cools back down okay so if you're in there five six even probably ten seconds is not going to harm it but I like to keep it under five seconds and if the solder doesn't flow the way it should then I either need to clean the tip I need to add more flux or I need to increase the heat alright so here we go on the second so and I don't have the fume extractor running just because the background noise I'm literally just kind of blowing this away from my face I didn't want the fume extractor running in the background so alright here's the second one all right so you can see that still on the tip it didn't flow out the way it should so I'm just gonna add a little more paste and we'll try again beautiful and it's that simple I'm gonna quit talking and just finish the rest of these I know I was playing with these so I'll stick a little more paste on here I said you don't need a whole lot and there is a such thing as too much all you're gonna do is create a mess and the stuff splatters you know it pops as it heats up cuz you're heating it so quick so it will pop up and splash in your eye if your face is too close all right this third one here didn't flow so I'll clean it up a couple more drops of paste here you can use a brush I use my finger I tear these laptops apart with my bare hands a little paste on my fingers not gonna hurt me you know so you can see we have one that flowed out I had a little too much pace there if you have the pace spot on it'll be a perfect shiny little ball for you you can see the ones where I had a little too much because it literally flows and spreads out but now that that's done you would take your pre-cut fuse so you'd have them all on the bench ready to rock cut to the same length now you do is clean your tip real quick and then hold it at the joint take the tip of your iron are you doing this heating up the solder that's there enough for that to stay in place then whatever busbar you need go under it and then you form this to the busbar so kind of bend it the shape that you need so there's no unnecessary tension on the busbar or on the fuse you shape it around the busbar itself and then on this side barely heat it up enough to cover the end of the fuse and then you're gonna take your solder I usually do the middle first and then the sides so I'll put a little paste on this joint that's way too much that's a lot of paste on there but it'll be fun all right so now I'm doing the fuse to the copper so at 800 degrees let me turn this up actually I'm gonna go up to 850 you know let's say 890 and I'll finish off at 890 but it'll take a second for my iron to catch up but the same principle I'm only on here for a couple seconds the solder kind of melts right down takes its shape and I'm a cat saying hello clean the tip and now this is this would be a cold joint because I heated it up with the flux on it even though there is flux inside this wire I want to go back over it to make sure I don't end up with a cold joint so just real quick refresh that joint refresh that joint there you have it now I have soldered literally tens of thousands of these cells with several different styles of busbars and I have never once had to change the tip for this unless I wanted to it doesn't burn out the tip

Channel: The Combat Engineer

Views: 346,514

Rating: 3.9909484 out of 5

Keywords: soldering tips, diy tesla battery, how to solder, vape battery, solder lipo

Id: OtHw-RNyl3g

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 29 2017