Battery Hookup's Nickel Fuses

hbpowerwall

hbpowerwall

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Been on a learning curve (burning nickel is hot...) with BatteryHookupsnew nickel fuses.

So far I'm so impressed with the speed and ease they can be attached. They look clean & it's easy to see when a fuse has failed. The only thing they lack is the ease of maintenance.

My testing methods so far have been less than 'professional' but I'm enjoying the curve as well as sharing what I've learned.


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The first video basically trying to figure out current flow via the thermal camera, kinda failed due to the size of the battery and the nickel sheet does a great job of dispersing heat.


Second Video
Me trying to 'test shit' didn't exactly go to plan BUT did learn so I guess that's a win.
 
I saw Avg Joe talking about these and thought they were definitely worth checking out. Since I'm mostly ebikes and cars my worry is about cell replacement being a hassle.
 
If Alarmhookup could make the circular cut-outs larger - large enough to push cells thru - then you could cut the spring/fuse and pull out out of the way and perhaps hack it back on (mabye solder) or just cut it off and straighten use it as a fuse wire.
 
If the cutout were to be made large enough to fit a cell through, there would not be enough material left to carry much current.
I think it's already pushing the limit, certainly for a 100+P pack. Might be a good idea to reinforce with a copper busbar down the center.
 
I guess the issue is if you make the cut out larger it will make the fuse even longer & reduce the current-carrying ability even further? Definitely a design trade off
 
The fuse can be tapered so thats not a problem. You can even run the fuse in another angle.

Its important to remind that this is not the holy grail that save you from fuckups or low draining cells. Its a simple way to incorporate fuses for dead shorts or high current and makes life so much easier to assemble larger packs :)
 
The glowing fuses photo is a nice money shot.

Just to confirm, these are nickel plated steel, not 100% nickel?

Pretty clean way to go about doing this, but I still like the idea of those glass axial fuses. Considering I am not spot welding (yet), it certainly limits my options.
 
Yes nickel-plated, someone on facebook shared a photo of the glass fuses acting as a lightbulb for half an hour so with the right conditions any photo looks like a money shot lol
 
Just about all fuses will glow nicely for an extended period of time in the "sweet spot".

I did test the glass axial ones and they do get hot, got enough that I did melt the plastic on my wire grabbing meter leads when I clamped too close to the glass. I do prefer the blow element being contained, but the design of these fuse sheets are clever.

Just an old video, of the glow.
 
I can't believe Batteryhookup went nickel-plated steel for this design. As someone who has taken apart a thousand generic packs or more, I expect nickel-plated steel from China, but not from an American company that claims to be helping the DIY community. Not only is nickel-plated steel much higher in resistance to pure nickel, it is also subject to rusting that can cause cells to rust. Even the tiniest scratch and light humidity can make the steel underneath rust. A spot-weld is enough to burn off the nickel plating and expose the steel underneath. I've attached a picture of two strips, the one on the left is nickel-plated steel and the one on the right is pure nickel. You can see the rust underneath the nickel plating that was leaching onto the positive terminal of the cell I was extracting. The strip on the right came from a pack of rusty cells, but the nickel held its integrity. I wouldn't buy this, but that's just me. Hopefully you all have better luck with nickel-plated steel!


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The issue is stamping pure nickel, it's just too soft. Credit where it is due, Tom always disclosed this fact (unlike the chinese)
 
Surely plating thickness would also play a part in how the end result works over time?
If so, there would be better and worse standards of nickel plated steel products?
 
I would assume Oz
 
The more I used this product the more I like it, agree it's not perfect but it's 100x better than soldering packs.

 
Looks like you have self discharging cell(s) in packs #41 and #48, possibly others? The process of finding those in "traditional" packs can range of easy (visual inspection) to tedious, but not difficult (desolder all fuses). Faulty cells can be replaced in less than 10 mins?

How is it with the new nickel fuse pack? Obviously some major disassembly is required... or can you slice off just one section? Is it enough to do one side? Can the whole sheet be peeled off all in one go without shearing? How often can cells be re-spotwelded?

Perhaps a mid-road approach of using 10 pieces of 2x4 nickel fuse sheets, and soldering them individually to the bus bar is a good balance of speed, performance and serviceability?
 
Maintenance is always going to be an issue - with the speed this product can be put on and the fact the cells aren't un-naturally stressed by the soldering process you can reasonably expect that the cells will have an even longer serviceable life requiring less maintenance. (one would hope)

I like your approach of just cutting off half, that would work well and would be more cost-effective, a different approach could be using 2p strips I guess making it more serviceable.

But if I should be honest making the pack better in the first place (don't do what I did and build shit batteries for the tubes) will reduce the maintenance issues greatly. Thus this is no different to replacing the pistons in a car engine. You deal with it when it happens and accept its part of car ownership
 
Does it worry anyone else that the section that burns out is quite long, and in the videos, during a short between both sides, there is a fair amount of glowing red metal for quite a while before the fuse section blows?
Pete, it might be too much to ask, but are you interested in doing a comparison test with your old process (one strand of wire for fusing per cell) and/or with the new method of spot welding on a few cells, then fuse wire to the bus bar?
 
Oz18650 said:
Does it worry anyone else that the section that burns out is quite long, and in the videos, during a short between both sides, there is a fair amount of glowing red metal for quite a while before the fuse section blows?
Pete, it might be too much to ask, but are you interested in doing a comparison test with your old process (one strand of wire for fusing per cell) and/or with the new method of spot welding on a few cells, then fuse wire to the bus bar?
Click to expand...
@Oz18650,

Yes it has always worried me to have an open air fuse just glowing away till it blows splattering its liquid molten metal everywhere. Especially on the positive side sliding downthe pos terminal and shorting it to neg.

But I think there is a solution.There are a ton of different size insulators for the pos end of a 18650 cell. Cheap too!

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Install insulation before spot welding and enjoy.
You could also go very radical and cover the positive side with silicone which would encapsulate the wire/fuse.
Make replacing the cell a bit of a hassle though.

Wolf
 
That test is without a doubt worst-case scenario, most times it's only one cell that fails& in that case its dam near instant blowing of the fuse. I have so many of those cell insulators from www.18650shrink.com I should have used them but without thinking and the many takes it took to get the panning spot welding shot right I just kept getting premade packs i had on the wall without busbars. :( But the good thing that comes from these conversations is I'll do it again and apologize for not remembering this conversation lol


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