Would be nice to have factory 18650 offerings with bottom and top tabs for spade connections of a sort.
Well, a little more progress out here on the plains,.. I have the buss-side strips made and almost ready to go, need the
holes for the thru bolts, and the end buss's yet. This side of the pack will be rigid with no spring, so I can rivet the strips in
place, and mount the buss strips solidly.
I'd like to get 2Kw out of this pack if the used cells will cooperate, not all that much, but the end buss's will need to be thick
enough to handle at least that much comfortably. Later on if I get better batteries I can upgrade the end bars maybe.
Anyway, I probably need a little thicker copper on the ends,.. single dimple strips,13mm'ish wide, and 230mm long. Can't get
too thick though, unless I machine the phenolic a little. So,.. .035"copper thick enough, or need more?
Another thought I had was to just solder the tops of the dimples, and paint the rest of the copper. Easy to do with a solder
gun, but not all that consistent, kind of want the tops to be flat too, (maybe with some practice).
Also, I have some 50 percent silver brazing rod that I could maybe braze the tops with, for a thick hard cap, that stuff is
really tough and won't rub off. Maybe I'll try a test sample and see what kind of mess that turns into.
Yea, I don't know how much contact pressure will be needed, and the surface of the battery cap isn't that flat either, but
these cells are made for contact connections in the first place aren't they?