cell safety question

Hi all,

I'm hoping that someone can help me with aquestion I have regarding safe cell use. The questionrelates to twoissues that occasionally happen when tearing apart packs.

1) Very occasionally, I manage to get a short across a single (maybe two) cells when the nickel strip cuts the plastic beside the positive terminal and creates a short between the negative case and the positive. It is instantly obvious, and I've always been able to break the short very quickly. However, often the negative shell is exposed because some of the plastic melted.

2) I've some packs (most recently a bunch of Moli cells) that seem to be glued together with concrete. No matter what I do, the protective shell splits. I can't cut the glue, dissolve it - I even sacrificed a chicken and it didn't help. The shell is still intact (I can wrap it back around the cell), but it is broken.

In such cases is covering/repairing with kaptontape good enough? Do I need to put heat shrink over all of them?

I just want to be sure that how I deal with it is safe long term.

Thanks.

Eric

you can just use tape to cover them.

It should be good enough. That's what I did when i was building my ebike pack.

I just got a large lot of the Moli brand cells too, also encased in glue& some infiberglassfrom prior housing. Get some proper heat shrink,mate. There's a few people here that sell it cheap enough. I cut it to 72mm and reuse the plastic or paper "O-ring" as well. If you short the (+) to the main body, especially if your soldering them, it's exiting to watch but one hell of a hot mess, literally. Keep a stock of wrap, it's a tool you'll need often if your serious about this hobby.

Do it all the time, never really had an issue - just part of the process, for both questions wack a new sleeve on it and away you go.

Ok...thanks for that. I have been putting new paper o-rings on all the cells I get. Figure its just one simple to add layer of protection.

When you rewrap them, do you typically put any sort of cell identification info on the new wrap? Like cell make/model for example?

I'm thinking it would be useful, just to keep track of things a bit better.

Eric

CUDAcores89 said:

you can just use tape to cover them.

It should be good enough. That's what I did when i was building my ebike pack.

Click to expand...

Is duct tape a good one?

Besserley said:

CUDAcores89 said:

you can just use tape to cover them.

It should be good enough. That's what I did when i was building my ebike pack.

Click to expand...

Is duct tape a good one?

Click to expand...

Thats what I use

Wattsup said:

Besserley said:

CUDAcores89 said:

you can just use tape to cover them.

It should be good enough. That's what I did when i was building my ebike pack.

Click to expand...

Is duct tape a good one?

Click to expand...

Thats what I use

Click to expand...

I have no idea about using duct tape. However, kapton tape is essentially non-conductive, and very thermally resistive. It is that golden coloured tape in so many battery packs. Around here, it isn't very expensive, and a single roll goes a long way.

Eric