All right, let's make another battery project. Today's video is sponsored by PCB Way. This time around we're gonna be talking about this guy. This is Lev60 and this is a 74 amp hour battery that is a Lithium-r and phosphate so they're long lasting.

They're super safe so most people are gonna need this. Uh, as a 12 volt. Or at least a lot of people are gonna need this as a 12 volt, right? Because these type of chemistry. the 4.2 volt chemistry makes perfect uh, 12 volt batteries.

In fact, that's what these are used from. They they come from I think BMW used them in their 12 volt uh, 12 volt battery in the cars, right? And so what we need to do is make a very affordable uh 4S 12 volt bus bar. So this is just a simple thing. We've been doing this for a while now.

We've been making bus bars out of uh PCB um, material, right? Because these are easy. I can design all these things to custom shape and size and the holes and stuff. and then the copper can carry quite a bit of current through here because it's copper and not aluminum or some other type. Right now, what you can do is like if you have a particularly High drain application because these can put out 200 amps continuous and up to 600 amp bursts of 600 amps for 10 seconds, then what you can do is just double up and put more layers in here, right? So if you have something that is going to require hundreds of amps, yeah, just put a few layers in here, The uh.

The studs here are quite. uh, long enough. I Think for you to do like three, four, five layers of this in here and then you can set it up in your application. Then you put your thermal camera in there.

Then you can see how hot this is getting here right? So all the the hot spots are going to be right here. This is where the current gets transferred. It goes from here, then from this cell to that cell. So it the the electrons choose the shortest path which is right here.

The rest of the stuff is not going to get hot, it's just going to be here here and here and then this. You know it's directly. You can put your uh exit points right directly on the stud so then that way is not a big deal. Now the cool thing about having a bus bar like this is that then allows you to do something like this where all the balance leads end up in a single connector and then you can then use something like this to balance or just to check.

Keep an eye on your battery. You could put a BMS in here and then wire the negative to the BMS and then out of the BMS So through the BMS Essentially right and so this would make it really easy for you to do that. You put your BMS here. put double sided tape.

you stick it on there, then you connect your uh balance leads in here and they're labeled and stuff so that's easy for you to check them or whatever. So let's go to the drawing app and then make this board right there. So here's our 12 volt battery. It's got four cells and if I delete the thing here, we I measure them.

uh and then that's these are the dimensions when you got four of them put together because these batteries are quite powerful. Then the the places where I expect for it to get hot is right here. right here and right here. and so for that reason, what I have done is I made sort of like a washer.

It's this one right here. So if you see this, it's basically those two uh studs side by side and the two the cells are these are distance just correctly to be there right and this width right here is about all you need to handle about a hundred amps and I have I did a test here. Yeah, there we go. Now it's starting to go up 120.

121 degrees. Fahrenheit so about 30 degrees above ambient there where I tested that and they get about 30 degrees above ambient there. So what we're gonna do is so here's the uh, the outline of that file right and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to copy it then I'm gonna go over here. so I'm gonna paste it over here.

Did it work? Yes. So here it is, it's pasted right. So then what I want to do is put the outline right here so that you could know where to go Because if you were to like, put it right here for example, then you were to short out these two cells right? This is very obvious to someone like me that's dealing with a bunch of batteries and cooking them up and serious. and you know, parallel but first time users.

uh and Builders this could be you know, uh, confusing and so I'm trying to make these as easy as possible and for that reason I'm gonna do I'm trying to figure out things to to make it easy and so this is going to be one of those things. So what I'm gonna do is here is I'm gonna go top silk layer which is that yellow one and then I'm going to put it in here see that's where that would go and then obviously now this is kind of in the way here. we'll move these over here, we'll put the other one over here, we'll do the same thing. we'll move these because now those are the clothes there and then over here.

Then we flip that over and then we put it in here and then here. and then uh, we are gonna have to do a single one for here because so the idea is to put these on the bottom and so you can't just put these spaces right here and not put something in here. So we're gonna draw one in here that it's um, actually this way right and then we'll just make these. Delete these.

Actually don't delete that. Let me back up here. Boom. and then what I can do is I can just put it in here and that's where we need to cut one.

So we delete this layer. we move that in here somewhere in here and then uh yeah. same thing over here. we move that in there and then we just put another like little line from here to here and then you just adjust that with to uh point two, five four and there we go.

So that's gonna be a one the same. it's not going to be a special one. Well I it might have to be because this, if you want to use these uh I guess I'll test that for now. we copy this design here.

No, not that one. What am I doing? We copied this design. so here we go. That's what I wanted to do and now those outlines are there so that it will help you when you're assembling this unit here, right? So so there we go Now of course I've run.

The samples that I have here are not. uh, don't have those lines so we're not going to see those in in The video right now when we put this together. But you know? here's just an example of you know how to how to draw something and change it in there. Uh here.

For example I you I put the Uh for use with the these cells the Lev60fs and I put this as a URL So if you don't haven't gotten your cells when you get these boards for some reason I guess it could exist then you know where to order them. Or if you have this battery, you got it somewhere and you don't know what the cells are and you want to look them up. Here they are. Here's a URL for the cells, right? And then it tells you that this is a 4S lithium iron phosphate Uh.

battery capacity 74 amp hours continuous power is 180 m amps. That's what the cells can do and then Peak power for 10 seconds. It's 600 amps. So this is just pertinent info for this pack right here that we're going to make right.

and then uh, these are just so that uh, this is our exposed layers right here so that it can. You know it can make good contact on the top of the cells and stuff. So let's save this right? Um, and then let's print it out and then let's build it. Okay, so once you order your board and then you install the little Uh connector here, you have choices of these connectors, right? This ones are very cool because you know you could just put any cables in there, right? So when you do that, then these are sticking down, uh, past the board.

and so what's happening is that they could touch the top of the Um cell. So what I did was designed some custom made Um washers so that you can put them in here and it'll erase this little board up on top. Uh, just a little bit just to clear those right. But then I thought, Well, since I'm making washers, why don't I make them in sections of two like this so that they could also serve two purposes right? so they can, Uh, Also, uh, add opacity to this thing, right? So as I explained earlier before, this will handle about a hundred amps.

Um, a single board like this that has a one ounce copper and so this? That's what this is, right? So this are these: Plus Bars by themselves are able to do about 100 amps. Now we add a second one in here and you should be able to do about 200 amps right? And so that's why we're gonna put them in here. So now you just have to be careful. when you put the Uh cells.

This is how you install them. You have to make sure that you got cells negative, positive, negative, negative, positive, Negative Positive Negative Positive right? And you can use these Marks here to help you. Uh, guide you if you're having trouble doing that right. So then the next thing you do is you'll put one of these in here where it connects.

You see where this red thing is out of here and then the other two are going to be here. so that's what you have to do. So we do that on the battery and these have these little notch in here because these stick out a little bit right and so um, you'll just have to do that right here. Put two up here and then one down here in the center, right? So then for these ones right here, what we did is we just cut one of these in half.

Uh, and these you can cut it easier with some big scissors and then we're gonna use those in here and put them here and that'll raise up the Uh board here all while also adding more copper on the on. The portions of this where uh, the the current needs to travel through right? So once you do that now it's as easy as put it in, installing it on top so you make sure Positive, negative, positive, negative Yep, everything looks cool. Oh yeah, by the way, if you're wondering what these are here, these are for these little blocks that we are buying and then we're putting on here. So this allows you to uh not have to use a ring terminal for your connections.

You could just put the bare wire in here and then attach it, screw it and pinch it with this hole in here. And so this is another possibility that you could do with these uh with these plates. Now these are optional. You don't have to use them, you don't have to do it this way, but you can if you want to.

You could also just put ring terminals in here. that works Also, you put it in there and now you see that little thing is lifted in there right now. We just put the uh nuts, tighten them up, and then we can test this bus bar. All right.

So let's load these. We're connected in here. I'm going to put a load and then the thermal camera. We're going to record here and see how hot they get.

Oh, look at that. 141 amps, 141 amps. Let's do another 50 amps. so let's do 200.

All right. So 200 amps foreign? So 140 degrees Fahrenheit at the 10 minute mark, let's add another layer on top to see how much we could lower that number. All right. So now we have extra layer on top here.

Uh, in those three sections where it's going to get hot and then now we have our 200 amp load again, we'll see what the temperature is going to look like now. All right. So 221 amps and it looks like we are getting 116 degrees. Fahrenheit So adding three layers is definitely the way to go if you want to do over 200 amps.

Uh, if you're going to be over under 200 amps I'd say just do the two layers. It's fine and the batteries are about to quit. That's it. Uh, sit.

That's all the battery gave out and we were only able to get 117 degrees. uh, which is only only about 30 degrees above the ambient here on this hot day. All right. So that's today's PCB Design This is the first one.

I'm also working on a 24 volt and I'm on a 48 volt version but I still I'm not ready to release those yet. but today we're going to release that. So if you want to, uh, build this battery, just, uh, click on the link down below and you can go to our sponsors website where you can download and print out your own boards and that's the you could pay the least amount right there, right? Or I'll also put a link to our website where we'll start selling these ones. I Think these ones are already on the website but not these.

These are not ready yet. Um, and then the cells. They'll be LinkedIn cells in there in the project description. So thank you PCB way for sponsoring this video and thank you for watching and uh, thank you for building batteries and using some of our products.

All right, we'll see you guys in the next one. Bye foreign.