While there are still discounts on aliexpress I would like to buy a budget spot welding tool so I could make my own battery packs.
I don’t need fancy machine just something simple with time and strength of impulse adjustment that would be used like once a month to spot weld up to 12 cells.
I could build one but it ends up cheaper to just buy finished product + I save a lot of time that would be needed to learn what I would need to learn to build it.
I prefer buying from aliexpress since there are discounts now and I am in Europe so shipping from US is out of the table.
If you have experience with these cheap battery welding tools please share your advices.
I don’t know of any that are that cheap. I wanted to make a 12 cell battery pack a few years ago and the cheapest spot welder I could find was a few hundred dollars. Maybe things have changed now but maybe not.
I ended up soldering nickel strips onto the cells to make the pack, its still working well today. Its certainly more dangerous than spot welding so I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but if you have a soldering iron that’s nice and hot (400°C or more) and reasonably powerful (60W or so) you can do it quickly enough that you don’t damage the cells.
Ready made for $50 will most likely be a waste of money-- especially if you’re using thicker than 1.5 nickel — I have several from $350 – $80 ---- The one I bought from BatteryHookup works really well $80, but you have to catch when they have some
I also made one with a car solenoid and timer off of youtube – worked ok,but all y packs require 2.0 nickel
