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All I know is it used a nickel sulfamate solution, so electrolysis was involved I think.

Oh there may well be one, but I was fast running out of time (still am). Plus I have no experience with nickel plated copper and how it welds.

Copper is highly reflective, so it needs to be a fibre laser so the optics don't get burned out. They can't cut nickel for this reason either. Waterjet cutting has a kerf of about 0.5 mm which is probably OK for this stuff, but the sheer number of holes and cuts made it expensive and slow. I'd block...

top side welded.jpg Module glued up.jpg Okay, so the first module is more or less done. Some key observations about this battery building technique. 1. It's painfully slow, but only because I have a small welder with tiny electrodes. I feel it would be faster if I only needed to zap each tab once o...

There's a lot of learning as I go along too. I finished the other side of this module in a day, but yeah its a huge job. If the nickel stuck to the plated aluminium like I want it to I could have done all 4 by now.
In future I'll use 21700 cells, as they're 30% less work.

Dave I tried paralleled DC motors on my first electric motorbike and it was a PITA. One motor would always end up doing the work. It's far better if you put them in series and let them share current equally, even if that means more volts on the battery pack.

Well this latest community transmission detection has resulted in a week of not going to work, which means a week of no pay. At least that means I can work on the battery modules in a hot shed all day. first module bottom side welded sml.jpg I've finished spot welding one entire side of a single mod...

Yeah, but I'm trying to get the car out of the garage by the end of February. No good ordering stuff now given Chinese New Year. I worked out I can do a busplate (46 tabs) in 40 mins. So that's 8 days work of 8 hours a day. With four welders and four people, I should be able to knock that down to ab...

And Bridgetown is a good little town for EVs per capita. I know of about three or four in the area!

Nice. Will the battery wind up in a 2012 Leaf?

I usually find the car side lead plenty long enough. Just arrange something to take the strain like a string to hang it from the socket or something.

I've found a welder - you're in!

Okay so this is a huge job. It's taking me about a minute to weld each tab to the busbar, and maybe 10 seconds to weld it to the cell top. Either way, there's about 2 weeks work assuming no sleep or work... :? So I'm putting the call out to anyone who has a welder to come and help me do this. I want...

20200621_141615.jpg Yes - everything you wish to do is not only possible, but recommended :) I highly recommend an angled 32 A plug for the OpenEVSE though. It doesn't stick out like bollocks when it's on the wall. Wire up L1 and neutral (and protective earth) on the socket and plug and you should ...

With a south easterly blowing, probably yeah.

It looks like an electric Venue. Which is... okay I guess.

With no aircon it should be possible on a full charge for sure. You'll drive right past my parent's old house as you enter Warwick too . Great to see EVs in conservative old Maranoa.

I actually asked GOMA if they would like to display Voltron - Australia's fastest electric vehicle. But the exhibit had already been organised. Maybe if they travel around they'll let it in...

While saving for LG Chem modules from a Jaguar I-Pace ( https://zero-ev.co.uk/product/lg-4p3s-module-2-6kwh/ ) I thought I'd get busy with the odds and ends that have been sitting for a while on the project. Instead of using a mechanical sensor attached to the original throttle cable I opted to get...

I finished putting the balance wires on the second module and gluing up the sides. It's ready for spot-welding now. 2 modules ready for welding.jpg I started to assemble a third module, and I used the first polycarbonate capture plate the guys at the plastic machining shop did. It was an older cutte...

For a half decent, 150 km range EV? About $40k.
For a bare bones, DC, good enough? About $20k.
Li-ion batteries haven't gotten cheaper, but they have gotten better. What used to take up a whole boot and then some for 100 km around town now takes up half as much space.

Second module ready for spot-welding.
The thermally conductive epoxy resin is in Perth - I happened to miss the delivery, so with a bit of luck I'll get it on Monday.

If its available I'll happily give it some work!

I hope it finds a good home, Rob. The converter must have an eye for detail, and no half-arsing. When an old/classic car is converted it needs to look the goods - it's already a contentious issue converting a classic to EV, so having it look a bit 'howyagoin' only adds to the consternation. Any phot...

I'll believe the long term energy storage applications for hydrogen when I see it. Right now I'm not sure there's any megawatt scale RE generation-electrolysis-fuel cell-electricity dispatch systems in operation anywhere in the world. There are plenty of applications for hydrogen as an industrial fe...