neoprene a good material to protect battery?

I am thinking about picking this up

http://www.amazon.com/Sponge-Neoprene-Adhesive-Thick-Wide/dp/B001G8E114

and gluing it to my ping battery pack to protect it

This is expensive, but I want the best material, and I think coroplast isn't durable or soft enough. Is there anything better?

Thanks!

I used the GF yoga carpet, to pad the box that contains my Lipo. She was mad, but forgave me short after. 8)

MadRhino said:

I used the GF yoga carpet, to pad the box that contains my Lipo. She was mad, but forgave me short after. 8)

Click to expand...

+1

Guilty as charged. She's still grumpy about the missing corner of her mat (that she NEVER uses).

Mark_A_W said:

MadRhino said:

I used the GF yoga carpet, to pad the box that contains my Lipo. She was mad, but forgave me short after. 8)

Click to expand...

+1

Guilty as charged. She's still grumpy about the missing corner of her mat (that she NEVER uses).

Click to expand...

That is because you left her the mat with a missing corner, you'd better take it all, so she doesn't see it anymore and can forget.

Got any old mousepads laying around? Betcha they have some good 1/8" thick closed-cell foam (often neoprene) under the picture or advertisement that the mouse was intended to skitter across. Some thrift stores have a lot of them, but it seems much harder to find them nowadays than it used to be.

They are what I plan to use for vibration absorption in my Vpower pack rebuild, once I find enough of the right kind, and get the Kydex panels a friend is making for me.


Just a note: there are at least two types of foam mousepads, and the lighter type won't work very well. I don't know what it's called, but it is more like the soles of flip-flops than anything else I can think of.

Isn't neoprene used in scuba wetsuits?
I used to dive 30 yrs ago and the memory isn't the sharpest.
If so, I remember staying relatively dry wearing them. Just a little bit of moisture got through. not standing water , just moist.

Poor cooling / insulates . Consider vibration stress on the tabs : a cell_man reference . Wetsuit is wet , but traps heat & warms up . Dry suit is waterproof material . Ordinary foam pad 1.5" -2" will work between battery case and frame .

I would think it would be a great way to pad the ping. Just leave a window in it where the bms is, so you don't insulate that part.

I still like the idea of something very stiff around pings or shrink wrapped lipo. One of my pings has a box folded out of the top of a large plastic tote. That battery has broken out of the metal box and flown over my shoulder to land in the dirt, twice, and it's just fine. (rear rack carry = catapult sometimes) Something soft, and I'd have damaged a corner. The metal boxes on the bikes have all eventually gotten a corner bashed in. My ping setup is always a custom fitted super tight hard container, then foam padding to fit it inside the metal box. One custom container was folded up out of a thick cookie sheet, the other from a plastic tote lid. This container fits super tight, and really provides the first and most important layer of protection. Threads on how I did it buried somewhere, either in reviews or in pics.

But if you carry in a box that isn't custom fitted then some kind of padding between the hard box and the pouches is mandatory. Stick on neoprene looks perfect to me.

Similar materials without the sticky might be found cheaper. I have used both anti fatigue mats and thin mats for aerobics/ yoga to pad inside battery boxes. Also camping sleeping pads, and nowdays neoprene is used often for laptop and ebook bags. All findable for pennies on the dollar at the trift stores.

My other favorite material is coroplast. (political signs, etc) Free when the election is over and some schmuck that lost hasn't retrieved his signs. My lipo boxes are metal and wood, but use coroplast inside to prevent chafing and achieve a nice snug fit. With the coroplast, you could get sharp edges that could be a problem. You just have to do your best to avoid that, by folding along the corrugations as much as possible.

I've had good luck using EPP (Expanded PolyPropylene) foam. You could also use EPO Expanded PolyOlefin foam as well.

Gotta go with the exercise mat material. The alternative is the black variety that Walmart sells for working in the garage - same stuff - neutral colour. Agree with Dogman that you have to surround the BMS with non-compressable foam that is vented for heat dissipation. The added protection that you need is after fastening the matting with velcro (DONT glue it!) then slip over a recycleable shopping bag to prevent branches or whatever from penetrating. I have bushed my bike a number of times and the battery survived even after the carrier was destroyed. Neoprene would be too soft and would compress too much on impact - take an old thermos filled with water - cover it with tin foil then your favorite material - drop it from six feet onto a wedge of wood and see whether it damages the tin foil.

I don't know how much an exercise mat costs (if you can't liberate one from a friend who has used it up), but you also might try a foam mat made for sleeping bags, found in the camping sections of fine outdoor stores like WalMart :wink: . It's also closed-cell foam, IIRC, it's cut about 6x2 ft, 1/2 in thick or so, and pretty cheap.

Cameron