Hey, this video is sponsored by PCB Weight. Let's talk about batteries. All right. Continuing uh with our series on the Le60 Lithium Iron Phosphate cells.

This right here is what we typically call a fat configuration. It's eight cells, Four cells like this. four cells sideways right next to each other, right. And with this configuration, you can make 12 volts for car audio.

or you can make 24 volts for energy storage. So if this works for you, Great! We did a video put the whole project open source so you can go and download all the stuff right. But if you have dimensional constraints, these same eight cells can be configured in something like this, right? So two wide like this and then four long like that and so you could connect two of these in parallel and then parallel parallel parallel and then connect all these in series. This will make the same 12 volts for car audio.

So a lot of our customers have, uh, reached out to us and say, like, hey, we need to fit this behind our seat or in a place where it's long and narrow. but not so the fat doesn't fit there right? And so that's why today we're going to make a bus bar. We'll help you make this. Let's go to the drawing app and then we can show you how that's going to be done All right.

Because we've done this before. We know the dimensions of all these cells right and so, but it's going to be the same thing these you know we just copied them from the other designs that we have. the holes that we added in the last iteration of that. That's all carrying over here, right? So now let's look at the Copper Tree This This took us a few tries in here to get it right, but finally did it right.

and basically we have to. There's always a tendency to cover most of the area with some kind of copper layer, right? So this copper? right here. What happens in the manufacturing of these Pcbs is that they just lay the whole thing with copper and then what they have to do is they have to mask these areas that you want to keep the copper and then let this Expose and then they expose these areas to a chemical bath and then that dissolves away. This right, And so sometimes you're like, well, you know, leaving the copper there adds more rigidity to the board.

It adds uh, you know, um, more termal stability to the board because now there's more mass there to take the heat if these are going to heat up or whatever. But the downsides is that they become, uh, heavier. uh, and 50% of of the price of these. These are going to be the shipping because these are made in China right? And so they can make them really quickly because they have machines and robots and stuff and everything's highly automated.

But the transportation over to the US and the other side of the world, well, that's half. Believe it or not, half of the cost of this thing here is the the weight, the shipping, right. And so if you basically remove any of the Copper from the places where you don't need it and you're not really using it right then that will save substantial The savings are substantial enough for us to try and do that, especially when we order earn these in large quantities. And so that's the reason why I decided to take them off of here, right? And so of course this is the top layer.

And so yeah, anywhere where I don't need it here. but on the bottom surface as you can see, they don't do. they match exactly. They don't match exactly.

You see how they overlap in here, right? And so the reason for that is for uh, where are these guys? Yeah, to to have these These are the exposed traces right? Um, and so this is what's going to actually contact with the cell. And so that's the reason why. these are a little bit bigger and but they're small as we can have them uh and do their job. Basically, that's what we're doing here because again, this will cost you so much more uh in shipping and we I literally don't need it.

And so that's where we're at right now. This is the 3D Now all this text right here. It's carried over from the last one that we did, uh, the DI, Even the diagram is basically the same. This is the same schematic.

This is the same battery. It's just physically laid out differently. right? And so the dimensions are going to be different. But electrically, this is going to be the same way.

right? The same thing. And of course, these are so that you can use two different terminal blocks that we've have. These ones are, really, well, kind of expensive. Like $20 I think? um, but they you know some people might might want to use them and stuff.

And then these are the ones that we're going to make these right. Here are the outlines of the aluminum bus bars. right? Again, these this copper traces here are not enough to carry the 1,200 amps that this batter is capable of doing. Yes, you heard that right.

1 1200 amps for 10 seconds and about 800 amp continues, right? So that's a lot of power. And in order to carry that much, then we're adding Uh, an E inch layer of aluminum here, and an E inch layer here. On the other design, we were using quarter inch, but that's because there was only one pathway for the electrons to go, right? So we're squeezing all 1200 amps through one single pathway. Where here we're spreading it and doing it.

Actually, there's three like these two right here, but then also diagonally like this so the electrons could run. So this Uh is so much more efficient at carrying those 1200 amps that you can literally cut the Uh the thickness of this uh aluminum here by by half and it still does Gr on our testing here. 1200 amps. it gets warm, but it doesn't get hot right and so you're going to use three of those uh, square ones and then the D-shaped ones on the ends here so that you can put your terminal blocks right.

Other than that, this is very, very simple. All this is very easy to do now because we've done it before and now it's just carrying all the Uh Dimensions from the last projects, right, the connection for the balancer, and then this connection that we always put in here just in case you ever needed to put this connector in here and then tied multiple of these batteries together. It would be really easy to just run a ribbon cable from here to the next one, to the next one, and to the next one. and now all these are connected, kind of together, becomes one battery essentially very easily without having to run a bunch of cables and a bunch of wires.

And you know, crimps and it's like super easy way to do that right? So now that we have this drawn, let's order it. Okay, so to order one of these things is easy, You just come to PCB Way.com Uh, click on the link in this, on the description of this video and then you can go in there and it'll bring you to this page right here and it has the links to get all the parts right. The aluminum shaped plates that we're going to use on here on this design. Well, you can order them here right? and it tells you to get three times of these square ones and you can go in there and then a pair of these D-shaped ones and then the five pin connector.

It's right here. The nuts that we recommend using for these, Uh, the cells, right? So there's links to that, the terminal block, there's a link to that, the Batco balancer, and then the Batco balance cable. It's going right here and then optional two cell compression plates. We also made compression plates for these big batteries, so this is a big battery and you might want to compress it.

The plates compression plates are made, uh, serve two purposes to compress the cells and also to attach it to the bottom, right? So here's where you come and you order that stuff. you download the gerver and then you order it yourself. Or you could just come in here and order at them to the C and order them. Now, the only downside to doing it here is that you have to order a minimum of five, right? But I think most of these PCB Um, shops in China the minimum is five of these things and so it could run a bit expensive because this is a big board.

Uh, also they it might be. uh, they might give you like a warning thing because we're really pushing the limit on the size of this board. This these, uh, a lot of these. uh PC B Shops in in China are not equipped to run a PCB of this size right? So you might, uh, run into a warning.

You might have to talk to them. They might ask you like if there's a mistake then we can't redo it so you have to just take a usually. what they do is they refund your money and then you just have to place the order again and that's just kind of. It goes because of the size constraints, right? This is a a big giant board.

Like bigger than most people people ever need. and so this is yeah. So there you go. Once you order it, then you just wait for it and it'll show up and look at this.

Here is the board. This is really long. um and flexible. but once you install it in your battery, it'll it'll stiffen up and stuff right? So again, you just have to, uh, populate the connectors.

just solder the uh. the connector here. Now let's just install this board. Make sure you line up these right.

Negative, positive, negative, positive, negative, positive, negative, positive. There you go. and then make sure yeah, they line up with the board. Now with these holes that we made here.

Now this board sits right at the top of the actual thing. Next you're going to need obviously the three um, aluminum bus bars here and then the D We'll leave these ones till D Let's do these okay these D plates when you get them on our website there. they are going to come like this right? and the reason why those exist so you can put them here I Guess you could put them like this if you wanted to have it overhang The Edge there. But they're designed to be put like this right? And the reason why these have these little holes is because these blocks um, that are readily available.

Uh, and we have a link to them have these holes. These five holes and so that's how we use to attach those right and so there's kind of left and right. The two uh holes go towards the front and that's how you would install those. and the reason is because these ones have, uh, the bigger holes for the bigger cables and then these ones have for the smaller ones, right? So that's how you install those.

Okay, so you torque down everything here and then the last thing to do is to install the the balancer right? This is the balancer. Uh, there's links for that also. and then there's links to this little cable. So the way you install, that is so you first have to back the screws because the holes are closed right now so you have to open them up.

Okay, and then this little connector now goes in here. Now it fits in there. and now you tighten the little screws. You have to be gentle.

Don't overtighten those. You have to use the right screw driver. If you don't then you're going to mess this little connector up. We've had a couple of customers, uh, ruin that connector and then they call is saying like hey, I can't install my thing and it becomes really expensive cuz you have to send back the thing and you know the whole thing.

So just be careful there. So there we go. You connect that in there, put double-sided tape, you can tape that in here, and then you're ready to go. Now you have your balancer here.

You could, uh, start balancing the battery. There we go. It's just easy as that. Now it's balancing that battery.

There's a 17 Molt difference in these pack right here, so it's very well balanced, and then you can install this into wherever your car, your vehicle, or whatever. Now, of course we like I said. We have the optional compression plates and then those have a flanch on the bottom that you can use to attach these to wherever wherever you're going to install them, the final place, right, then the other thing, be careful, and then this is all exposed right? So don't put you know, uh, metallic objects? Let it touch in here cuz it will short out these post. you know will.

We will see 1,200 probably more than 1200 amps at a dead Shore Probably you're looking at somewhere close to four or 5,000 amps at a dead short. So whatever you put in here, it's going to loose, it's going to melt, it's going to start glowing red, and it's going to spark, and it's going to be a bad day for you. So just be careful. This is very, very powerful battery.

Cover this up somehow. Uh, either a lot of people use wood to encase this battery and then put it in their vehicles and stuff. You could use any other non-metallic uh. enclosure to put this into your vehicle.

And then there it is. This is a Slim. That's what we call this. The 148 amp Hour 12vt Slim L 60 Battery Capable of 1200 amps or uh, uh, Peaks and 800 amps continues.

Uh, that is about 1400 Watts right? 14,000 Watts By the way. So very, very, very powerful systems. Uh, 148 amp hours. It will last quite a while I Probably at full power, probably will last you like an hour or two, right? And so make sure that when you install this in your vehicle, you have a powerful enough uh alternator to charge this up right? Don't let it, don't let this run flat or really down.

And then you start up your car because then your alternator is going to work overtime trying to charge this up. and it might burn your alternator right? Because your alternator, you know, is not meant to run uh for that long. This is a big battery and so it will charge at the maximum. If you have a 300 amp alternator, it might try to put 300 amps in here for I Don't know, like half an hour or something and it's not.

It's not used to doing that. If you have a alternator that can add put that much power continuously, then it might burn your alternator. So just keep in mind this is, uh, this is a big battery. It's very powerful, but it sucks a lot of energy too.

And so if you run your system with the engine off for a long extended periods of time, then this battery is going to try to suck a lot of energy out of your alternator when you you crank your car up right. And so if you don't have the right equipment in your car, then yeah, they might suffer right because of these batteries. Very, very powerful. Both ways come pushing energy out and then sucking energy back in.

So there you go. I'm not the most qualified to talk about car audio because I'm not really in that world. I Can tell you all about batteries and uh, the specs of the batteries and how to build up and stuff. But for the car audio? yeah just make sure you watch videos out there to explain like the what you will need to have a big lithium iron phosphate very powerful battery in your in your car right? so you can run it successfully.

All right. So there you go. Another open-source project where you can go and buy buy all these components and build this battery yourself for a fraction of the cost that you would pay if you bought this already made at some you know store right that sells batteries now I Do get that not everyone is DIY and not everybody is comfortable doing this sort stuff and building it yourself. Uh, if you are interested in this battery but you don't want to build it yourself, we also sell it uh fully built like this so that you can just install it in your vehicle there will be a link on description is video also for that right? But if you're want to save some money and you want to learn about batteries and build and you're not afraid to get your hands dirty right? Uh well.

this is a DIY project sponsored by PCB way I Want to thank PCB way for sponsoring all these videos and uh you can support them by going in there and buying the PCB from them. All right? We'll see you guys on the next one. Bye This is gorgeous. It's quintessentially Californian It feels really updated.

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this is a surfboard model designed by Rob Machado But most importantly, it's ecoboard verified by Sustainable Surf. The surfboard with this logo on it has a carbon footprint that is 30% less than a surfboard built with traditional materials. that's Huge. What else is there to do when you've got an EV Beach bus cooler full of tofu dogs and a full camera crew trailing your every move is time to hit the beach with my brothers and sisters and party and feed them.

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