A123 Hypersonic Charger Balancing/connector

[Finnster]

There are somevery detailed and great threads over @ RCGroups in the batts section. the forum is more for planes, but same things apply. Most there were just using the bussbars. They seem to hold up well enough, but they don't draw the huge currents we do for the most part. There is one bar that is thinner, possibly acting as a fuse. Most leave the bars and sodler some copper wire to assist where needed. I'd post links, but that site is blocked from work :010: Search A123


Also, I thought I had read where someone did some testing, and the V drop w/ buss bars showed nominal decrease vs using batt bars. Ie, it really wasn't worth the trouble (which is quite a bit w/ the A123s)

[zeropointbug]

Yes, I have read that at 35 amp draw, the stock strips loose 1% voltage, so anything higher is going to have exponentially higher losses, naturally.

I have talked to A123 Systems, they sounded quite stern about soldering their cells, they told me cycle life would be significantly decreased. Definition of 'significant', I don't know, but they should still last far longer than lipo.

An 80 watt iron should do the trick. I have a 300 watt iron I use for this kind of stuff. Also, one spot you should beef up is the thinner strip, it is there to act as a fuse for too high of currents.

BTW, from the 'developer kit' I bought last year when A123's were first released, and the cells I got from the two packs, there seems to be quite the quality difference. The older cells I have seemed to have been 'clones', they were like 'pro extreme team matched' so to speak, these new cells from the dewalt packs all vary in voltage when fully charged for some reason.

But I will wait until I get a few runs into them first, in case it's a 'break-in' issue or something.