Purchased new batteries but no terminals/studs were installed

[rhino]

@HighTechLab was thinking about getting a laser welder to weld studs onto those raw cells, not sure if he ever got one.

 

[Luxpower_Gilbert]

Another issue is height of cell when in place to drill.
I would get a vice that holds securely the cell, and a strap that holds the cell down.
Most good drill presses have a positioning plate... maybe find a placement of the cell so rotation centers the terminals...

7mm deep max, i would recommend using a stud instead of bolt, don't use m6, with my experience m6 failed so I use m8 instead. I wouldn't recommend using Lock tight. and use a little bit oil on the hole before tapping the battery...

 

[HighTechLab]

@HighTechLab was thinking about getting a laser welder to weld studs onto those raw cells, not sure if he ever got one.

Still want to get one, but I got a Rigol oscilloscope instead. Kept me out of hot water with my business partner.

 

[Alkaline]

Well one cell drilled, bottoming taps ordered, the drill press has a measurement on it, both holes were drilled the same but it seems i hit copper on the Negative terminal.

Ignore the scratches on the cell, I accidentally caused them when centering the drill bit. then checking to make sure both were drilled to the same depth after seeing the copper/copper looking color.

Cell is still reading 3.30v

When I get the grub screws I will be using a threadlocker on them as the primary contact area is the cell terminal not the screw and I don't want them to move.

eeehhh! I see the copper is that bad??

 

[Luxpower_Gilbert]

eeehhh! I see the copper is that bad??

its ok that's the max you can drill..

 

[VeganBiker]

7mm deep max, i would recommend using a stud instead of bolt, don't use m6, with my experience m6 failed so I use m8 instead. I wouldn't recommend using Lock tight. and use a little bit oil on the hole before tapping the battery...

I had thought of going M8 but decided on M6 as I can always redrill/tap to M8 if anything happens and M6 provides a little more original surface area for the lug

 

[Lt.Dan]

I had thought of going M8 but decided on M6 as I can always redrill/tap to M8 if anything happens and M6 provides a little more original surface area for the lug

This is the way

 

[Alloy]

the silver epoxy I used was about $20 from Atom Adhesives. Amazon now has a 2.5g from them for 13.99 now. Because so little was used - if I remember correctly I only used about 1/3 of the package for eight cells. The hard part will be the set time of the epoxy- getting it on the screws and then set to the proper depth x all your cells.

Well good luck whichever way you go!

Silver + Epoxy (what else is in it) + Aluminum + metal screw + nickle buss increases the chance of corrosion (more resistance). It's something to keep an eye on.

 

[Alloy]

My current plan is to drill and tap, I think the 8Nm is to prevent stripping of the existing threads which in this case I don't have a hole to thread.
I also attached images in case people were curious how they arrived, the pallets were wrapped in black plastic.

How many cells were in a full pallet?

 

[VeganBiker]

So there would be 54 cells in a full crate, 9 boxes per crate, 6 cells per box, I had 64 cells slightly more than one crate.

I finally got my taps today and they turned out to be regular taps not blind so I just took the grinder to 2 of them making myself some blind taps, one more extreme than the other. Sadly it seems I managed to not have my holes perfectly straight, probably an issue of using the harbor fright drill press which didn't quite line up with where I needed to drill.

Anyway now that I have one cell drilled and tapped its onto the electrical test, charging at a little less than 5a will take awhile, based on the initial voltage of 3.3v they are around 70% charged so I'm looking at about 20hours.

It appears my electronic load reads the voltage a little low compared to all my other meters. 0.03v so I'll have to account for that in the discharge test. there is still a fair bit of loss it seems over the 14ga wire I'm using to charge, I may up it a little bit to 10awg but I figure this wire is plenty for the low current.

I'll end up stopping the charge before going to sleep and restarting it in the morning when solar power is back.

 

[Loadtoad]

So there would be 54 cells in a full crate, 9 boxes per crate, 6 cells per box, I had 64 cells slightly more than one crate.

I finally got my taps today and they turned out to be regular taps not blind so I just took the grinder to 2 of them making myself some blind taps, one more extreme than the other. Sadly it seems I managed to not have my holes perfectly straight, probably an issue of using the harbor fright drill press which didn't quite line up with where I needed to drill.

Anyway now that I have one cell drilled and tapped its onto the electrical test, charging at a little less than 5a will take awhile, based on the initial voltage of 3.3v they are around 70% charged so I'm looking at about 20hours.

It appears my electronic load reads the voltage a little low compared to all my other meters. 0.03v so I'll have to account for that in the discharge test. there is still a fair bit of loss it seems over the 14ga wire I'm using to charge, I may up it a little bit to 10awg but I figure this wire is plenty for the low current.

I'll end up stopping the charge before going to sleep and restarting it in the morning when solar power is back.

What ever happened with your project? Were you successful?

 

[Loadtoad]

I guess not.

 

[Lt.Dan]

I guess not.

@VeganBiker hasn't been active since Aug, I doubt you will get a response from him.