jonyjoe303
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 18, 2017
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Recently I decided to build my own lifepo4 battery. I bought the 80 x lifepo4 cylindrical 5.5 mah cells. When put together as a 4s 12.8 battery pack it would be 110 ah battery pack.
My original plan was to solder all the cells together like I usually do with laptop cells but the solder wasn't sticking to these larger cells.
I researched on how to tab weld the cells together, they sell chinese made 110 volt tab welders on ebay but they require a large inverter and in reviews they would pop circuit breakers when use at home. Since I was going to build this battery in my van I decided to go with a tab welder that operates off of a 12 volt battery.
The one I found is a DIY ARDUINO BATTERY SPOT WELDER PREBUILT KIT V2.2 from the malectrics website, its
someone from germany that sells these units. I paid 95 dollars (including shipping) for the welder and the diodes, you need to supply your own cables to put it together (which I already had). Shipping from germany took 1 week.
If you don't like putting things together this unit is not for you, I put it together and used xt90 connectors to connect to my 28ah fullriver agm ( they recommend at least a 40 ah lead acid), and I used 8 gauge audio wire cable to make the welder cables.
As far as performance I was able to completely tab weld my first battery pack, it took 2 days to do because the welding cables kept getting very hot and I had to stop numerous times to let them cool down. I was using the power setting of 4.4 to weld. Battery was completed and works excellent.
This past week I decided to build another 110 ah lifepo4 battery pack, this time I decided to replace the 8 gauge welding cables with true copper 6 gauge "welding" cables. This made a major difference, these are larger heavier cables and I was able to tab weld the pack (80 cells) in one sitting about 2 hours. The cables got a little warm when I did multiple tabs at one time but nothing I couldnt handle. This time I used the power setting of 1.4, it seems with the 6 gauge wire I needed less power to get the same results.
This is definitely a good tool for those that build your own battery packs. Its not some underpowered tab welder , the power setting goes all the way to 9.9. Though they recommend 40 ah battery, my 28 ah agm had plenty of power for the job. After I finished building the pack, it only took 3 amps to charge the battery back to full.
This is a picture of the tab welder, its basically a circuit board with large cables hooked into it, it works excellent for the job it has to do.
My original plan was to solder all the cells together like I usually do with laptop cells but the solder wasn't sticking to these larger cells.
I researched on how to tab weld the cells together, they sell chinese made 110 volt tab welders on ebay but they require a large inverter and in reviews they would pop circuit breakers when use at home. Since I was going to build this battery in my van I decided to go with a tab welder that operates off of a 12 volt battery.
The one I found is a DIY ARDUINO BATTERY SPOT WELDER PREBUILT KIT V2.2 from the malectrics website, its
someone from germany that sells these units. I paid 95 dollars (including shipping) for the welder and the diodes, you need to supply your own cables to put it together (which I already had). Shipping from germany took 1 week.
If you don't like putting things together this unit is not for you, I put it together and used xt90 connectors to connect to my 28ah fullriver agm ( they recommend at least a 40 ah lead acid), and I used 8 gauge audio wire cable to make the welder cables.
As far as performance I was able to completely tab weld my first battery pack, it took 2 days to do because the welding cables kept getting very hot and I had to stop numerous times to let them cool down. I was using the power setting of 4.4 to weld. Battery was completed and works excellent.
This past week I decided to build another 110 ah lifepo4 battery pack, this time I decided to replace the 8 gauge welding cables with true copper 6 gauge "welding" cables. This made a major difference, these are larger heavier cables and I was able to tab weld the pack (80 cells) in one sitting about 2 hours. The cables got a little warm when I did multiple tabs at one time but nothing I couldnt handle. This time I used the power setting of 1.4, it seems with the 6 gauge wire I needed less power to get the same results.
This is definitely a good tool for those that build your own battery packs. Its not some underpowered tab welder , the power setting goes all the way to 9.9. Though they recommend 40 ah battery, my 28 ah agm had plenty of power for the job. After I finished building the pack, it only took 3 amps to charge the battery back to full.
This is a picture of the tab welder, its basically a circuit board with large cables hooked into it, it works excellent for the job it has to do.
