Battery Soldering?

i would recomend only holding the iron on the battery just long enough to get the solder on there. some lithium batteries ive seen can handle internal temps of around 200 deg f. as long as you dont hold the iron on there too long you should be fine, heck they have solder on them already right? even if they dont, battery packs are soldered together all the time. any other experts out there wanna chime in on this??

Commonly the cells are welded, not soldered. If you want a decent job ou might look into having alocal battery shop do the welding for you once you get everything else hooked up and in place. It shouldn't cost too much for a dozen or two spot welds, but I've never actually gone out and priced it.

Have you already bought the batteries? The easiest thing to do is buy them with welded tabs already attached, which only costs an insignificant amount more (25 cents). Then soldering will be much, much easier.

Something like silver solder, ought to make it a bit easier anyhow if you can't get anyone to do 'real' welding.

dan k

I wish I could have some one do it for me locally, but I there isn't anyone around here that does that sort of work.

No, I haven't purchased new batteries yet. I only just discarded an idea a friend of mine had for jury-rigging the battery pack. I'll try to find some with the tabs like you mentioned. Does anyone have a particular internet retailer that they prefer for this sort of thing?

BTW, thanks for all the great info so far. It is greatly appreciated.

Just make sure you use flux.. and it should work no problems.. I have done it befor to fix cordless phones..

Saw instructions somewhere online for building your own small spot welder for battery tabs - stuffed if I can find it now. Try hackaday searching these forums. Looked pretty cheap, safe and easy from memory.

MAKE to the rescue!

Even cheaper method: mod a soldering gun!

Hot damn! I gotta try that! OK . . . I'll make a lil' ground clip thingy to attach to one 'trode and have a contact tip on the other. Cool!

dan k

Just to add my NZ $0.02 (rapidly losing value ), I re-wound a microwave oven transformer to try and use it as a spot welder and never really had much success. The metals would get very hot but never actually weld like the real thing. Not sure why, it might not have been supplying enough current I suppose. (It did peg my AC clamp meter and bend the needle though...)

Neither of the two above are the ones I was thinking of - I seem to recall they used a high-current lab bench power supply. But they both look good - well found.

If you would like to follow this link it will take you to what you are looking for.

http://www.philpem.me.uk/welder/

Good luck & let me know how you get on with it.

Cheers
Brian

That's the one!