So it begins...... Battery spot welder

[rvpopeye]

Recent experience says....Hang in there SW , you'll be glad you did after it's over. No regrets coyote'. The poochicle will keep ya goin'.

[Scott7022]

I read your post and hesitated to comment. I saw/read everything and thought yeah thats about it. Hopefully it gets better but he is grinding it out and has coping skills/mechanisms in place.

I didn’t want to sound trite.

My Mother is a psychopath. She has never been correctly diagnosed but it is a fact. Oddly i always felt her love
Growing up. Differently than other kids or family members. But it was there. Perhaps sensing that the apple had not fallen too far from the tree I didn’t get the five second rule response my older siblings got. “Mom always takes five seconds to respond. Have you noticed this’?” It became a long running joke. Now with her mind a circus if squirrels juggling lightsabers she is her blunt self. The five second rule that allowed her to formulate an answer that was, if not abrasive at least less abrasive. She remembers me easier than my Sister that sees her three times a week. It is pure torture for her and in that vein I’ve commented here what I told her. “It don’t mean nothing.” This incorrect slogan was apparently coined by Marines taking Hamburger Hill in Viet Nam. The orders, impossible, the odds stupid, the reason…optics. Dying for that and those reasons were unsupportable in any way. Fear, hatred, anger, disillusionment. “It don’t mean nothing…” was all they had to hold onto and not go mad. Time went on and Brass thought better and Hill 937 was abandoned.

When I recently visited my Mom she said. “Oh Scotty I thought you died in Russia.?”

“Well I did but Satan thought I’d unionize the place so he sent me back.” I responded. .

“Well thats good not that you come and visit you’re dying Mother once in a while whats it been three weeks? You must have better things to do?”

(It had been seven months)

“Course I have better things to do than listen to you bitch and moan about dying but never ever getting the game accomplished. God you’re as bad as Sandford and Son. “

To which she hit me, and called me a cheeky bastard and got distracted by tea being delivered.

Marley said. “If she is easy, she won’t be worth it. If she is worth it, she won’t be easy. Which one is worth suffering for?”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[sternwake]

One of those posts I shuld have typed and deleted, butat 12 beers deep, i didn't care and just sent it.

I'd be cool with its deletion.

Shit's stressful, and the trajectory is depressing.

Thanks for the words.

[sternwake]

Been a while.

The family matters are stressful an many ways, and too personal in many more ways, and I don't feel comfortable sharing, regardless if it helps someone else or not.

My desire to be helpful started its steep decline when people started developing and believing their own convenient alternative facts, and willingly allowed themselves to be indoctrinated with whatever their social media algorithm decided was the most profitable to have them think, both in the short and long term. 

The cult members seem to not realize they are even in a cult, and just start spewing talking points which they've been trained to spew, without question, or logic, or even a hint or morality, because you see, they are victims and believe whomever tells them nothing is their fault, and that they are indeed victims. 

I'm glad I travelled overseas when I did, as embarrassing as it was to be associated with the Jerry Springer guests, and Bill/lewinsky BS, as it was, then.


------

Fiona and I don't really go for walks anymore, not from the front door, we go for rolls.  I load her in her Land chariot, and the Electric skateboard can tow us no less than 8 miles, at upto 23mph.  Daily, we go to her Swimming hole, which is 1/2 mile round trip from where asphalt ends.  The Heat has been pretty brutal, but I think we both have acclimated as much as our stocky body types will allow.  She turns 11 in September, and still has good spunk for an old woman, but I fear for her health, with lumps and bumps everywhere. One on her breast and nearby nipple leaks some brown Fluid.  The vet gave antibiotics for it, but they made no difference, so I will continue to give her the best possible life, as I promised her when I adopted her, and make sure she never suffers.


The Electric Skateboard got some larger more powerful hub motors( 400 watts each), and with the older Electronic  Speed Controller, 28mph was reliably achieved solo, and 30 was achieved with a tailwind once or thrice, but honestly it is simply  way too fast and dangerous for such a short wheelbase. 

 That ESC wound up suffering from random disconnects after about 500 miles of use.
 
 I'd noticed I was getting thermal throttling when pushing it hard midday on hot asphalt, then opened up the enclosure's bottom in order to expose the ESC's heatsink to airflow, and was a bit alarmed how hot the heatsink was getting to the touch.  I figure I cooked it.  It still works, but when it disconnects, I lose brakes, and if it disconnects at full throttle, it stays at full throttle for 2 seconds, which was super scary, when doing 23mph approaching a stop sign towing Fiona. Luckily I was able to slalom slow down to running speed and stepped off into some grass and managed to remain upright.

This event caused me to attempt to get the Programmable speed controller( VESC) operating, which turned into a very time consuming, frustrating failure.  When it would go to detect motor resistance and inductance, the numbers it would throw out were way out of whack, and not repeatable, and the motors sounded like they were filled with pop rocks.  While it is possible to use bluetooth to change inductance and resistance manually, and try to find the 5% sweetspot, the BLE connection proved supremely unreliable, so I was opening the enclosure, plugging in a USB cable, changing the settings, reattaching enclosure to the board, taking it for a test ride, over and over and over, until I was dreaming of smashing it flat with a sledgehammer then hacking it to pieces with a machete.

I had an cheap, unused, reviled older non programmable speed controller on hand.
  I decided to attach that to my heatsink, just to be able to ride again, but this one delivers 15% less juice to the motors, and 26mph max speed, 23mph towing Fiona's land chariot(21mph towing the water chariot), is more than fast enough.

This speed controller is super twitchy, imagine your vehicle's gas pedal only going from idle to full throttle in a half inch of its 3 inch travel.
 
 It too has started suffering some disconnects that are almost predictable, as one motor seems to lose power first.  When this happens If I brake to a complete stop, full power to both motors returns and it does not shut off thereafter, yet anyway.  The brakes are super touchy, but predictably so, but too weak.

I added significantly more finned heatsinking, exposed to exterior airflow, but when the pavement is 140F, Those fins get super hot, and I have to ride very sedately to prevent thermal throttling, and sometimes that is still too much for it.

The 36v nominal 10S2p battery I built has been performing well.  I cut the heatshrink away from the BMS, to access the 11 Pin 2.0mm JST BMS balance connector, and made an adapter so I could use my two  7 cell 'capacity testers', 6 Parallel groups on one, 4 on the other to check voltage.

It revealed that there was only 0.032v max disparity between the 10 cell groups after some 600 miles of use, and a hundreds of partial cycles.  This BMS only balances, supposedly, when the parallel groups of two cells, reach or exceed 4.18v, and often I only charge to 4.15v, or 41.5v for the 10S battery.

It can only balance by bleeding off 0.03 amps( max) from Pgroups that exceed 4.18v, and It would take days holding 4.18v+ to balance out any significant disparity, and the few times I dialed in 42v, I rarely allowed it to stay there for more than a few hours, So I was pleased with a 30mV delta.  

I injected the one low P group to get disparity down to 018mV, via a Vbucker, and called it good enough and reassembled.

I've noticed no loss of range or performance of this battery in the 600+ miles it has accumulated since I have been using it.

It has 20 inexpensive 15 amp 2600 mah 18650 cells(DMEGC) that supposedly can deliver 1000 full cycles before declining to 80% of new capacity. A cycle being defined by manufacturer as 4.2v, down to 2.75v, and charged back to 4.2v at 0.5C.  I rarely discharge below 3.4v, rarely above 4.15v, and rarely even approach a 0.5C rate, so this battery should perform well for some time to come.

I have built another 36v nominal battery, 10S1P, using well regarded Molicel p42a 21700 cells.  45 amp rated, and 4200 mah capacity. I used a slightly different technique, so that this battery can flex and twist with the skateboard deck and enclosure, without breaking the welds.

I beefed up the 10 awg wiring from my cheap purple spot welder to 8AWG, and can use 15MS less duration pulses to weld a 0.1mm copper, 0.1mm Nickel plated steel sandwich.  The ZEE 3s 5400Mah welding Lipo battery is a bit of a weak link.  Two of them in parallel as welding batteries would be better, perhaps achieve in a 35ms pulse which takes 70ms now.
  It will probably be well degraded by the time I decide to spot weld up another battery, so it might have degraded too much to be an acceptable welding battery by then.
  Lipo batteries are monsters in terms of Amp delivery, but degrade super quick if fully charged and left there for any significant duration.  I bring mine to 3.8v per cell for storage, but even then they are not expected to maintain performance for very long, especially the cheap ones.  It has stayed very well balanced though. within 0.006v, with no balancer or manual balancing.

The 10s1P battery was designed for my smaller slower lighter skateboard , but all progress on that has stalled.  That smaller board is now encased in thick fiberglass, and has the 7s2P battery strapped to it, and is fully functional, but only does 12mph max.  It needs an enclosure built for it, and a 10S ESC.  I have some 375 watt 80mm hub motors for it, and replaceable high quality urethane sleeves for those motors, but these motors will not attach to the narrow trucks, and the trucks I have to which they will mate, are way too wide.  If I had a lathe or money to throw at it, it would pose little issue.  I primarily want this as a back up board, or as a lightweight board which I take into the store and hook to my belt or backpack, or if one of my young cousins want to go for a group ride, but 12mph is just too slow.

Modifying these prebuilt Eskateboards have been a tremendous learning experience, and when the time comes I will be getting Prisimatic Lifepo4 cells a quality high amp BMS, and making a large house battery for the Van.

Speaking of my Van, It has moved less than 100 miles since January 2023, and 70 of those were accumulated prior to 7/2023.  I filed a planned non operational vehicle registration with California last July, cancelled the insurance, and It just sat, rusting away since.

I started it a few times, moved it back and forth, drove it once, illegally, but By and large it was neglected and ignored.
Until recently.

I feared that once the CA Non Op registration ran out, It would pose issues trying to register it in Florida.  Getting a FL DL is required, and required some paperwork I had to acquire, and stressed out over, but the actual process of getting a Florida license turned out to be a 20 minute painless affair.  A strict attendant could have been like 'this is a copy of a birth  certificate, and not an authentic one, but they were like Ok, ok, ok, stand over there for your picture, give us 50$, here you go have a nice day.  
 Walked out a bit stunned.

That was a few months ago.

I got another appt for a 10 day temporary tag, and was in and out of the office again in 20 minutes, temp tag in hand.
They have to visually check the VIN numbers on out of state vehicles, so I drove it there, and walked out again within 20 minutes, Florida plate in hand.

So the Van is legal again.

But I have no airconditioning, and fans pumping in asphalt heated 105f  humid air is intolerable for Fiona or I, so I have not driven it again since.

The Northstar AGM-31 TPPL battery, I had it connected to Dodge van system's and the house batteries running fans in back.  One time I went to go start it after it sat for a few months unstarted, unmoved, and Northstar was down at 9.2v, and I had to use house battery to start.  The Northstar after a minute or 2 started gobbling up 90 amps from one alternator, then over 140 when I had both alternators set to 14.7v feeding them. An Unhealthy battery could never accept this much current, and after a half hour it was still accepting over 90 amps, So I decided to not worry about having to replace it anytime soon.  Unless there is a parasitic draw I am unaware of, I suspect its self discharge being 5 years old is responsible for the overdepletion. 

 I wound up taking my Deka house batteries offline and using solar to top off Northstar and cycling it the few amp hours a night the fan uses, and the next time I went to start it it cranked strong and caught instantly, and Idles like it had been started 10 minutes before.  I was worried about the 1.5 year old gas, but it idles and drives as good as ever.

More on the good news front, is that the fairly major fiberglass roof gutter restoration I performed hastily before leaving California, has held up perfectly, there is no new rust bleeding from where epoxy meets steel. I didn't get a chance to Paint the epoxy before leaving CA, and just hit it with white Spray paint before storing it for the last  18 months.  When I recently sanded off some of this paint, the epoxy saturated fiberglass  below had not browned at all from UV light.

Unfortunately, Dodge had this rather asinine drainage system from the RAM air vents above the hood, which also collects leaves and whatever else.  This basically rusts our the Quarter panels from the inside out. I noticed it dripping brown fluid well after the last rain and when I went to go dig out the leaves, found I could just Jam my finger right through what once was 20 gauge steel and rip out the leaves and detritus accumulated.  There is already a bunch of fiberglass in this area, and I have spent the last few days treating the rust. 

Grind, chisel, Dental pic, Ospho scrub scrape wirewheel, grind, carbide burr, repeat, over and over, while sweating my balls off lay underneath some shade, and cursing and getting more and more frustrated at the pointlessness of everything, everywhere, from the beginning of time to the very end.

 The rainy season has finally kicked in and pop up rain or thundershowers also throw a rusty monkey wrench in the progress, and I need to just walk away often, before I get overwhelmed.

I can't park it here at my parent's home, even though new laws prevent the HOA from fining homeowners for parking certain vehicles, specifically work trucks, but it's just not a battle I wish to fight, so it is parked 7 miles away.  I can do a day or three here or there, but honestly one almost never sees any car parked outside homes here, inside the development. 
The ones which are are usually 100K white German SUV's that are daily drivers.  Old shitty vehicles inside usually belong to gardeners or contractors.

  A 35 year old rusty converted camper  conversion van with a rolled on Paint job is just a huge eyesore, and received multiple complaints over the years, on my yearly Xmas visits.

I should be able to get RFID tags which open the automatic gates and not have to be scrutinized by a suspicious gate guard every time I come or go.

  I will be having to use the Van for landscaping duties.  Lots of 30 year old plants and shrubs have decided they want nothing more to do with life anymore, so Joy, I get to dig them up and replace them. 

As far as everything else goes, I have, and want no Social life.  I just don't like Human company  very much, and prefer to be alone.
  I despise any notification via my phone, and consider responding a chore, and gifts are Obligations, and I hate obligations.
 
Various married women have tried to use me to inject some drama and conflict in into their lives, and for fuck's sake, No!

I don't care if you have a loveless marriage and your husband does not seem to care. I do, and I don't handle Guilt well, and I can and do and will keep it in my pants, as it is simply not worth the hassle and the drama, and the brief thrill, is just not worthy.

Hope you are as well as can be.  

I'm just trying to maintain some semblance of sanity, and do the right thing, even though about 50% of people seem to have decided that that, is negotiable, with enough rationalization and justifications, and finger pointing.

[rvpopeye]

Glad to see your post SW .
Sounds like the LI battery and skate board issues have been sussed out (I knew you would eventually),
the van is back in service and you're now a Floridian ! Warm and clear ocean envy....
THX for the welder update , will be getting one set up , hopefully.

I think Fiona has a few good miles left in her , especially with the excellent available chauffer service . Spoiling her does you more good than you might think. (I'm jealous and think I'd like to see if I fit on those rigs for a ride !)
Those cormorants need her supervision too . Don't deprive them of her advice.

No such thing as a good HOA . Keeping up with the Jonses was nothing compared to it. It's funny how ordinary people feel it makes them part of the elite class LOL. Dumbasses..... Your world is so much better than theirs. And they do give you something good to point and laugh at.

The lonely lady bit brought a chuckle and was a reminder of some I've seen in life out on the road....

You'll be glad you stepped up for this job when it's over . I know it seems like forever at times , it won't be .

[sternwake]

Learning the little that I have regarding the Electric skateboard stuff has been humbling.

My boards are like an '85 Hyundai Excel, compared to a 2024 Bugatti Chiron, in both price, and performance, compared to what the enthusiasts have designed and built.

Some of the boards guys build just have insane power, and incredible mechanical and electrical engineering involved. Tbe DIY factor goes far beyond assembling overpriced individual parts.


Some have made their own presses and make their own plywood decks and then vaccuum bag them with carbon fiber, Mill their own Helical gear drives, design zusoension systems, can accellerate crom 0 to 40mph in 2.5 seconds.

Having built surfboards, and becoming a lead acid battery whisperer or speed controlling high power omouter fans, are skills not really relevant in the PEV world.
ò
I hope I can just get my VESC to properly power my weak ass hub motors, and would love to build a non kayak hatch limited board with 8" pneumatics, one day. But... Shitz expensive, and Im a moneyless bum.

My project list is way too long, when I have time for my own projects I am too tired, especially when the workbench jn the garage is 92f @11pm, and i get swarmed by mosquitoes, and instead go make sure the couch cant float away.

Tomorrow, Dad and I get a few hours respite from caretaking, and I hope to paddle 5+ miles before the thunderstorms blow up. Last outing we had to seek cover on an uninhabited island in the bay, and wait for one to blow it self out. Purple returns on the radar.
Fiona was not amused when Lightning struck nearby. In fact she could not stop shaking, until a cormorant popped up next to us while racing back to the launch.

[rvpopeye]

That dog sure has her priorities in order.
I had a dog that would try to dig a hole under the kitchen table during any thunder or fireworks.... but would go Cujo if anybody tried getting inside the truck.

[sternwake]

Hurricane Debbie dropped more rain and wind than did Idalia last year.
Some local reports in excess of 14 inches, so far, but a few miles away only got 6 to 8 inches, supposedly. Lots of training rain, with dry slots between, so this is not unexpected.

Some of my recently planted landscaping suffered some damage, and there are a few inches of standing water in poorly draining areas, and more rain on the way.


In regards to cylindrical Lithium batteries, my two spot welded 3s1p 11.1v nominal battery packs made from the 7s1p failed esk8 battery, are performing well with little cell disparity.
Their BMS' do not balance charge, but it takes a lot of cycles before the Vdelta exceeds 30mv. I manually balance one of the packs, injecting voltage into lower cell via a bucker to about a 12mv difference and call it good enough. The one other pack has yet to drift beyond a 15mv difference with no auto or manual balancing. Kind of impressive considering the poor quality and capablity of the cells themselves.

One pack I welded with 0.15 pure nickel, and the other uses 0.1copper 0.1 nickel sandwich using infinite slot method. The settings used on the sandwich method worked well on cells whose ends were sanded free of their nickel plating, but proved far too weak on new cells with intact nickel plating. One really needs to do test pulls on their welds as how they appear and how it feels when the probes sink into the material during the weld, take a lot of practice to tell the difference and the only way to confirm adequacy, is by the pull test, which in itself can deform the negative side of the cell can, compromising the cell to some degree.

Also when spot welding, one needs to avoid the very center of the can - side, as there are interior spot welds which can be compromised.

My first 3s1p battery, using a 3S holder with firm leaf spring contacts, and into which I used the LG batteries pulled from a failed 18v Ryobi battery, proved the least favorite 3s battery, as it seemed the battery in the middle would always drift far out of whack, requiring that I remove the cells and individually charge them.
I wound up just not using it for a long while, and when I went to go use it, found it dead. The center cell was down at 0.02v, while the other 2 were at 3.98v. I don't know if this is because the BMS puts a small parasitic load on the center cell, or that specific cell just aged out and self discharged to failure.
. I have repurposed the other 2 'good' LG cells in Flashlights, and they are lucky to deliver 900 mah of their 1500 mah rating, So I am keeping a careful eye on them when recharging, but should honestly just drain them completely and recycle them, and get some new cells for those lights.

I have had to retire some other cells, high quality cells. They were getting extremely hot when charging. Other signs they were failing were that they would not accept as much current as the charger could deliver, and take way too long to charge, getting very warm.

Some were 12 year old Panasonic NCR 18650Bs, and both started exhibiting this behavior within a month of the other, and keeping one in service for a few more cycles was thankfully, non consequential. These cells still powered flashlights at high lumen outputs for a respectable duration, it was only their behavior during charging which alerted me to their dangerous demise. Likely lots of internal dendrites causing soft shorts, high self discharge and high resistance.

If I were not one to monitor amperage, mAh accrued and voltage and temperature during charge, I might have blissfully kept cycling them in flashlights, until they caused a fire.

One other cell failed, which was a rewrapped Samsung 30q, a 15 amp 3000 mah cell that was from a Olight H2r flashlight and had some protections built in. It too was getting way too hot when charging, and exhibiting bizarre performance under load, so it too got drained to 0.00v and is destined for proper recycling.

In Esk8, almost nobody uses 18650 cells anymore, as 21700s have far more capacity and cost only slightly more. Molicel P42A, and p45B are two of the most well respected, and fairly soon they will have the P50B in full production, and the P50B is a major improvement over the p45b, which is basically the best 21700 cell on the market in terms of energy storage and power delivery.

There are higher capacity 21700s, but they cant deliver high sustained currents without heating excessively, nor be charged as quickly, and the P50b is a big improvement over the p45b.

The Samsung 50s is a good 21700 cell too, but gets hotter than the p45b under high loads and delivers the same overall mah as the p45b which is rated at 500 less mah.

Both the P42a and p45b have dropped in price fairly recently from 18650batterystore dot com, $4.15 and 5.50$ per cell respectively, which also sells new EVE Prisimatic Lifepo4 cells without all that super slow boat from china super high shipping cost dealing with customs crap involved like a few years ago. I ordered my 20 DMEGC and 10 p42a from lithium Ion wholesale dot com last November, which is another respected purveyor of Legit cells in the USA.

There are many counterfeit purveyors of cells out there, so shopping for the very best deal is unwise. Supposedly the P50b are for sale on one of the Ali baba/express stores, but the legit stores say they only have a very limited amount of pre production samples and which quickly sold out.
So buyer beware, as usual.


I found the Diagonal Mini remote's battery developed a significant parasitic draw after the remote got damp in the kayak hatch a few months back, and recently would only turn on if plugged into a usb charger. i installed a healthy battery into it yesterday, but the remote will still not power on unless plugged into a usb charge port, so While I could ride it in an emergency with a portable usb source, I effectively have no back up board.

I had another remote which I tried to pair to the junky jerky 7s ESC, but it did not work. Am currently considering the options, as not having a backup board is not acceptable. 2 days of rain, and no riding have Fiona and I climbing the walls, so having no backup board, even if it can only do 12mph, is unacceptable.

The 7S2p battery and the 7s1p battery that came with my two new prebuilt eskates still work well enough, but 10S is so much better, and most eskates are no less than 12S now.

While range has not been an issue as of yet, i am considering removing the 7s ESCs from the enclosures, and adding boost converters, to step up 25.2v nominal to 46v nominal charging voltages, and which can then act as either a portable 10S charging source to pull from backpack, or strap to the deck of the eskate and charge while riding through the charge port.

I was paralleling the 7s1p to the 7s2P battery through charge port, just to insure I could maintain that 12mph top speed a little bit longer on Diagonal mini, but both batteries had to be near the same voltage before paralleling.

The diagonal mini's 70 MM urethane sleeves on the dual diagonal hub motors are worn so thin and with chunks removed, they are about done for anyway. It's a shame as the hub motors have proven reliable on 7s, even getting super hot. They dont have replacement urethane sleeves available, so are likely just destined for retirement, and hopefully recycling rather than landfill.

I was going to put my 83mm diameter hub motors back on 7s, and be able to do ~15mph on a backup board, but the 7S remote failing kaiboshed that plan.

[sternwake]

The crushed shell trail, can now be rolled, though the last 100yards or so, over new looser un compacted shells, the 90mm urethane  hub motor urethane struggles.

Ive got some 8x3 inch 'turf' tires on front truck, which look ridiculous, but laugh at obstacles.

These huge pneumatic  tires, do cut down top speed and range, but well worth it. 22mph is fast enough towing Fiona, 25mph solo, and the comfort level is way up.

   

   




In the too good to be true category, an offbrand 630$ 'offroad' eskateboard was selling for 86$, and ebay's money back guarantee, had me click place order.

  Well see what if anything arrives, but if it is legit, it could outperform what I have now.

A lot of the claims as to range and battery capacity are not possible.  Perhaps it uses 4.8 ah 21700 cells, which could meet 9.6ah in a 10s2p configuration, but such cells likely have a low CDR, and it claims the 2 motors are 1kw each.  So more than one thing does not add up, but it usually doesnt.

Ive been stressing not having a back up board ready to go.  I have most of the parts to make 2 more boards of dubious performance, and was just looking for someof the missing   bits when i came a ross the 400% off 'offroad board, and perhaps un wisely, bought it.

[rvpopeye]

That 2 big and 2 small wheels setup does look weird . (Always looks like it's going uphill , so kinda like my rv )
I'm assuming the one you just ordered has 4 of those wheels ? 
At those speeds , make sure you don't put your bare toes too close to the knobbies !