Hi all
Remember those A123 batteries I posted about, a couple weeks back? I’ve found people to hold all our batteries. Wow! Thx to everyone who is helping the Bayview BOOM. Some came from as far away as Chico, to cart away these packs.
We’ve started to tear down the packs, and would be great to hear your suggestions on making the process easier and cheaper. Please check out the videos:
password: M1A
Here’s one possible improvement:
Problem - Removing plastic cover: We had difficulty removing the plastic cover. It’s time-consuming, very fiddly/wiggly, and lots of touching on or near hot contacts.
Issue: the plastic “prongs” on the plastic cover must have been inserted all at once, in a single downward motion, as described by Bob at the BoxShop teardown.
Solution: Therefore, maybe the quickest removal is to somehow pull the entire cover straight up, in one motion, after removing screws, punching out the tabs, and releasing the nickel and insulator sheet from their retainer. How to do that? Part of the difficulty is that the cover flexes. If you pull it up by one end, it bends.
Ideas:
· Top-plate: Attach a rigid, non-conductive plate or wooden board to the loose cover. Pull that straight up. The weight of the pack will help. Problem: how to pull it straight up? Maybe attach a couple handles?
· Bottom-clamp: Invert the whole pack and lay it upside down, with the unscrewed cover face down on the table. Then, somehow clamp just the loose plastic cover to the table. Then pull the rest of the pack straight up. Problem: it’s heavy.
Seems this approach has a possible added advantage that it might reduce the amount of touching hot contacts by the human, thereby making this a possibly safer approach.
-Johny Radio