welding battery boxes

I tried a wood/metal-brakets version which was okay, but the wood thickness used up valuable space plus it would have to be bolted to the brakets and bolts use up more space poking themselves into the box area.  SO I decided to try the metal approach.

Here is some physical progress on my 3 week brainstorm of a new battery location. 

After finding possibly the best supplier of sheet metal a guy could hope for, I used my brand new MIG welder to tack weld up this box out of 16 gauge sheet steel, which looks shiny like stainless but it is not stainless and will need to be painted.  (Powder coating would be nice, but I think I'll just go with paint for now).

I'll try to get the 2nd box, which holds 1 row of horizontal batteries done tomorrow.

And yes, the auto darkening welding mask is worth 10 times what they cost!

some early christmas presents

these arrived a few weeks ago as well.  various ideas leads to feeding my shopping addictions:

I received my Vicor Maxi DC / DC today, and wow is it tiny!
Not really sure how the "evaluation board" is going to fit into the picture, but I'm kind of glad I bought it...

Also my Raspberry Pi which is now running the Orion BMS software via USB to the unit, but I will be programing my own lite version to show minimal diagnostic data. The 7" display is not touch, and I finally realized I didn't want that thing in my car along with some sort of mouse/keyboard contrpation. Besides at $150 it was too expensive to have laying around a convertible VW. At $35 the Raspberry Pi is a reasonable loss.




So anyway, this Vicor, and evaluation board (which might get relabeled to "production board" by me), I don't really know how to start with it, I suppose I'll just hook it up to my traction pack and see if it blows up.



and the front side faced down into the board:


*shrug* anyone got a suggestion on what to solder first?

it's so tiny! reminds me of a deck of cards, so maybe I should head to Blackhawk and play some NLHE tomorrow? Live Casino Poker really is a lot closer to a slot machine than you'd think.

brainstorming the battery move

few weeks ago...

After scary fun with a reciprocating saw, and nearly destroying my car?
Last night I did a pegboard mock of my sub-level battery holder. Here is some pics.

first the scary hole (opps did I just ruin my EV?)
The large angle iron seen is the rear axle, has no vertical or lateral movement but it does swivel slightly so nothing can be touching it.


more cutting, and then the pegboard mock...


overhead shot, make sense? Total of 3 rows of 15 batteries = 45 = 144v
just the thought of moving this weight lower and in front of the rear axle makes me happy from the viewpoints of suspension/handling/catastrophe


is it okay to have 1 row of batteries laying on their sides? I'm pretty sure I read that it is okay but still not certain.