All right, let's talk about batteries today. I'm going to share the files to make the tops for these lithium iron phosphate batteries. A couple some customers are asking for them I don't really understand why they're asking for them. I Guess they want to build their own.

Okay, so these batteries that we sell are made out of A123 cells. They're pouch cells. They look like this and they are modular. You know you take them apart.

There's two cells in here and then there's one cell in there and that's the edge cell. But they come in little sections like this that have two cells and they just attach next to each other. When we get them, they have this big old cable harness that goes on here and with little screws and stuff and it's just a lot of cables and it looks confusing and so what we do is we take that off and then we take them apart and then we test them and then we put them together into known standards like 24 volts or 12 volts. right? 12 24.

and then you can put them as a 48 too. Now you can build this into anything. You can build these, you know, 11s, 10s, 12s, Whatever you want to do. but those are just the standards.

12 volts, 24 volts. Those are standards. and so because those are standards, Most people that's what they need. And to tell you the truth, these being lithium ion phosphate, it's the about the only chemistry that makes a good 12 volts right Replacement: 12 volts lead acid.

and so that's why we always recommend not to use Lithium cover oxide chemistries because those those wrong voltage. it's either too too too low or too high. but these when you put four in series. uh, it's perfect right? and so that's why these are good.

But then you know people will use two of these and then make 24 or three of these and make 36 to like power like golf carts, all kinds of 36 volt uh, equipment and then 48 to run big inverters to run. you know, like a big backup. You know, home size system right? So that's why we're we're sticking to those standards and so in order to do that, we had to make these boards. I Mean there's I Guess there's another way to do this, but this was the easiest way to do it when we put these packs like that.

That's how they end up and they just have these little screws studs sticking out and so the hard way to do this is just to connect those. This make a cable harness and have all the little connectors go crimp a bunch of ring Terminals and stuff and then put it in there right and then connect that to your BMS put a connector and stuff. but I Thought well the easy way to do that is just to make a PCB You know, and then you know you just get all the dimensions right, make all the holes that you want in here no thing. and then you run all the traces like you have here and then you run that into a connector.

This is a known connector for us because we use this almost in all our other little Battery Systems right? And so then you just plot that in there. My guys put these batteries together and then they put that in there, They put the screws and then they're done. That's it, right? And so these are what what we designed for to make these batteries. That's the 12 Volt version.

This is the 24 Volt version and they're different because that one runs eight cells in series. This one runs four cells in series times two. so four cells in series, but then parallel to another four cells in series, right? So this one's a bit more complex when it comes to it. And then also, we've made the Uh, Bms's right.

and so because these are raw cells, then you still have to use a BMS if you don't want to. You know, if you want to run them with without the chance of damaging them and so all you have to do is put these little standoffs that we also use in all your other little better systems as you can see all these design features that we've started doing. You know, years ago with other Battery Systems they're just transferring in here, right? and now they're just now. These are just a little bit bigger standups because they have to carry quite a bit.

These two will carry uh, positive and then this is positive and then this is negative. Uh, negative. I Don't think this one is this negative. This is nothing.

I think negative and negative. So two of these will carry uh, the entire load and all you have to do is just put the screws on here and now you have and then put a little ribbon connector. Now you have a BMS built on top of this battery and now you can operate this battery safely without the risk of damaging the cells. Uh, if anything goes wrong, then the BMS usually shuts off, right? So that's the system and so what? I'm going to do I'm going to share the files that it takes for you to order these right? Uh, this video is sponsored by PCD way PCB way.

Uh allows us to order all these files online and then within days they show up and you can order a minimum of five, but you can go all the way to like thousands of them. We order in, you know the hundreds right? So we order 500 of these at a time or something like that and then they'll come in and then you know we put them together and stuff so. but we we don't want to offer them because we're already just salad together as the battery system. and this is still quite a DIY battery system because you have to put the BMS in here right? Because there's several ways to put in a BMS You can make this a standalone battery, but you could also make this one pack out of like many multi-pack battery system and then you might want to choose to use a different BMS These BMS are not the greatest, right? They're not the the highest quality because you know, uh, high quality BMS are really expensive.

These are kind of budget batteries and so you know we give you the option to use this as is and then make that battery Standalone but also get a high quality BMS If you're doing a large system and then you know, use a BMS that has you know temperature control right, cut off, uh, high temperature cut off and then low temperature cut-offs for some people that are going to use these in cold weather and all sort of stuff, right? But that's why we don't make a battery system that is a hundred percent complete. One is because we're not in a manufacturer, we're just resellers, right? We're getting these batteries and then we're tweaking them. We're testing them. We're doing stuff like that and then we're passing them on to you guys.

I I'd rather sell stuff at cheap prices, right at affordable prices. Uh, so I can remain competitive? Uh, and then you know, let you do some of the work. You know, the DIY crowd And so the DIY crowd has told us that we need these files and so now let's go look at the computer to see how these are made and then uh, you know I'll share them. Okay so here is uh if we do the layers right there we go.

So that's the board line see So that's the layout of the board. and we did. We got this by, you know, measuring the stuff and by the way, this took a few tries to get the the perfect things like here. For example, this needed to be a little bit elongated right so we don't have to fight with them a lot.

but then these have to be smaller because these have pads around them that then the standoffs go on there and that because it those required to have the maximum amount of uh, surface area right to current to carry all that current. You know we're We're asking quite a bit of these batteries. we're asking somewhere around like 200 amps right? and so and because the cells can give it, that's why we we're asking. So that's why we're You know, we made these round again so that we can maximize the amount of surface area that goes on here right? And you can see that when you turn on this once here.

Yeah, you see that right there. See how these ones are smaller? These ones don't have to carry anything. all you have to do is just carry the current. But on the copper trees from one of these to the next, right? What is it like? Maybe we can see it here.

We put the top. Oh yeah, Oh yeah, yeah, that there you go. Like actually, those don't do anything. These this is just presses down and there's two tabs on there of the cell tabs that just crunches them together.

So this, the only thing they have to do is send out this signal here to this connector to get the uh right? So the only current carrying um, uh, portions of this is here, right? It has to travel to the connector. Actually, that's not, but it has to carry to these. These are uh, pads for terminals that are screw terminals right? And so if we put this in here, maybe you'll be able to see. Yeah, So this the positive one.

This is a negative one. This is the pause the negative for this. So there's two batteries here. There's one here, four cells.

and here's the negative. and here's the positive. And then there's another battery that's flipped around. And then here's a negative.

And here's the positive. So obviously because we want to parallel those batteries, then we flip them around right. And so now here are the two positives. This is the positive for this battery.

This is a puzzle for that battery. and then together they're here and they're connected into the same pad and then that's connected into this terminal here, right? and so so the current has to go from here to the terminal and then from here to the terminal. So it's really short runs and that's why we try to make this as wide as possible as uh yeah it's possible in this and then the the negatives are over here and then over here. So this one the negative uh, terminals right here.

So then the the path right here is really short but this one right here. Well that's long because that's on the other side. And by the way, we can just cross it here because we have all these pads that are being connected into this Uh connector here, right? And so now what we need to do is we have to use the second layer, the under layer and that layer. Main job is to carry this current all the way over here, all the way across down to this patch and see that see how they're they're goings around this and stuff and it goes around all these other little uh pads, uh, traces here and stuff right? and then all this other stuff is just to have a pad on the bottom.

Um for the Uh cell Terminals and stuff right? but that is basically what it's doing. It's sending every single one of the cell terminals into this connector here so you can have access to um, the cell Terminals and then you could just easily just connect the cable in here and then connect it to BMS and then it's supposed to carry the current here to these in case that you're using this battery with an external BMS not a BMS that is going to be here right now. If you're mounting the BMS on top with that other board that we that I showed you earlier, then all this stuff is just kind of here for nothing. You don't those these terminals are not used for anything because you're removing the power through here through standoffs and those are going directly into the BMS board and then into the BMS unit and then it's going out to the output so that this is all kind of bypassed by there except for this connector.

this connector is used. So what we ended up doing is because we're only using one little layer. one layer. and by the way, you see how um, small it is in places here, right? So what you don't see is that this is a hole that's going here.

So really it's just that and that and then it has to zigzag through here and then it goes on here. So it's only two little small layers. So this this is not enough to carry. Maybe this is enough to carry like 20 25 amps or something.

Anything over that it'll start getting hot and so what we decided to do is we decided to add a reinforcement layer And here is the that layer. Here's that layer and all it does is that now it uses two copper, the two copper layers to go from the very top of here which is the cell negative terminal into the pack negative terminal here and then it ties this one too because why not We have it right there and then the uh uh, what is this and oh and then this is the layer and that one can't go all the way through because we want to use this to reinforce this one too, right? So at least we're adding one more layer on both sides, right? So so this little board here what it does is it adds an extra layer to connect the two positives into the into the positive uh terminal and then the two negatives into the negative terminal right? So the this side of the board connects this and then the upper side. the upper layer connects the negatives to the negative and then if you look at the board here, that's what that secondary layer looks like and this is the easiest way and cheapest way to do it because these PCB boards, uh they get really cheap when they when they they're smaller right? And so because we only need to reinforce the the current path from here to here and from here to here. Well you don't need to make another entire layer right because then that that'll increase the price of this board.

So this is optimized for pricing and you know performance too. So it adds extra two layers. So with this now you can, you can do like you know, 100 amps in here or close to 100 amps. Uh, it doesn't get it gets warm, but it doesn't get too hot right? And so this is that board.

This is what it looks like Once it's all put together, all you have to do is to solder this stuff in there. This one right here. As you can see, we leave ex the the edges exposed to this board so that we can just easily uh, put soldered in there and here and then uh, and this one. Yeah, we don't do anything on that one which is weird.

We probably should I don't understand why we didn't. We should probably leave those exposed to and solder that in there so that that connects to that too. Hmm I see a mistake? Well not a mistake, but you know an improvement every time. I Look at these boards I Always see an improvement.

So anyways, this is the the 12 of all 100 amp hours two two batteries put together. and here's the the uh, the file. Okay, and now let's look at the 24 Volt. The 24 Volt.

It's a lot simpler actually because it's just this little thing here, right? And uh, we did ended up making a reinforcement layer, but it's not on this board right here. This was like a prototype that I was working on, but we on the production versions they they do and it's just like a C board that goes around here. We'll see it in the description here in the file. So this is the board and it's the same thing.

It's just a lot simpler because a the positive here and the negative are on both sides of here and then there's nothing here. So this there's not much going on here but here. and then what we did is we put these terminals very close to them so that the the throw here would be really really short. and then we made these pads as thick as it was possible possible, right? and so that there's the most amount of copper in there.

and uh, let's see here and these ones can do uh, two layers right? So there's a top layer, connects really close by here and then the lower left layer also connects there. But then we also, uh, decided to add an Xt90. on here, you know why I Don't know because 6090s are easy to use and they're very, very convenient for a lot of people in a lot of applications. So we just added here.

so all we have to do is use the bottom layer to go all the way across and connect here and then this one over here. So actually the bottom layer connects to the board to that connector and the top layer the same thing. But see, this connector has two layers going into this pin but only has one layer going into this pin because this top layer here doesn't go all the way through and it can't because this needs to. You know there's all these things need to be here, right? And so I think that's what the secondary or the reinforcement layer is for is just to connect the negative from here to here just to add an extra layer.

Uh, so that it's even right. And so because this is the longer run I Think what we ended up doing is have oh well, we can see it here. Where is it? Yeah, there we go. So that's all it is.

It's it's it's. adding this pad right here all the way to here and then the bottom two. Let's see, let's look at the bottom. let's delete that.

And by the way, this is just, uh, paint right? Silk silk screen paint that is there just to serve us an extra layer of isolation because these other traces, right are going through here. And so this is, uh, negative and you know in order to isolate it, there's a little bit of paint in here that covers the raw copper. But then you know you can add a secondary layer of protection. and so this is the silk screen paint in there.

But once you take it off, for example, so you don't see it, yeah, it connects that to this and then it also connects that because why not? we have it. I Guess why not have extra? Having too much copper is no problem. It's just when you have not enough copper that it could be a problem, right? So at the very least, there's two full layers going from here to there and then the other full layer is going to be on the other side on the other board. and then this one has two full layers here and then two full layers on the other board.

So this one has four layers of copper that are connecting these to that and then this one has two and uh, this the other the other two here. It's just because it's there because because we can't right? But we really only needed two for this because this is only like an Xt90. So you could do a Max of 90 amps but continuous to only do about 45 and so these two layers are more than capable of doing 45 amps in there. So anyways, this is, uh, we're gonna share this and the project.

So if you want these boards, all you have to do is go to Pcbway.com and then download them. You can download them right here. Uh, you can download the file and then order it yourself from any PCB making shop in China or in the US. Or you could just click Here and you can actually purchase it from PCB way.

Uh and you know if you support them they support us. They because they're my channel sponsored anytime. I Talk about Pcbs and stuff. It's uh through them they've they've given me.

They've helped me quite a bit in learning how to do these projects and uh yeah, we gotta show their support our support to them for some us all right? So I want to thank PCB way for sponsoring us and click on the link so you can go and support them and stuff. Uh look, they recently sent me a mouse pad. How do they know? How do they know that I needed one? I don't know but they knew all the way from China Maybe they're keeping an eye on me? So anyways, thank you for that. We'll see you guys in the next video.

If uh, all these projects that I'm doing they're always going to be open source and they're gonna. We're gonna provide the files for this stuff now. Obviously don't always do it right away. Sometimes it takes me a while right? There's some projects some of these files that I should share in there in my to-do list for a long time.

but uh yeah, just bear with me and you know, just go to my account there on PCB way and then you can see all the files for all these designs that I've shared in the past and I'm always constantly adding I don't know a few of them a month and stuff that I'm doing there and I'm always working on new designs because I'm just making a bunch of bunch of tools to make batteries useful and to help people DIY people build DIY batteries so thank you for that. We'll see you guys on the next one! Bye.