Preferred tool to cut nickel foil?

[hillzofvalp]

I want to cut nickel without a laser or a die press. Snips/scissors leave curled up edges. Dremel makes a big mess. What do you do?

 

[Jeremy Harris]

How thick is the nickel?

I've cut tab nickel strip that's 0.5 mm thick (20 thou) with aircraft snips OK. It curls a little bit, but is easily hammered back flat. I have a small guillotine that cuts it a little more cleanly, but it's a pain to get the stuff lined up for a straight cut with that.

You may get a better result with a sharp craft knife and straight edge, although I expect it will blunt blades pretty quickly.

 

[Kin]

I've seen thin but not paper-thin metal sheets cut with a paper cutter. One of those larger blade ones designed for cutting ~30 pages of paper at a time.

 

[hillzofvalp]

It's 5 thou nickel. I will give the snips and mallet another try..and see if my paper cutter is sharp enough for the job. Thanks guys

 

[Sancho's Horse]

I have cut a lot of aluminum flashing, and I used to use tin snips. However, now I use the construction standard of scoring and tearing. I just use a razor knife to score my pattern with a metal ruler or freehand, whatever. If it is something I want to end up flat, I tear it by alternating between pulling my right hand towards me, and then away from me. There still is a curl, but it is an alteranting curl which is easier to hammer out. The flatter I want it, the more I alternate. I find that having it curl in opposing directions allows me to work the metal against itself, so to speak. It seems to be best for me. Not sure how it would work for nickel. I find when there is only one curl direction it is hard to get it to hammer back to a uniform look, but with lots of small back and forth patterns, it may come closer to uniform, and what is lacking still looks pretty good.

 

[999zip999]

I have a 6in. shear and it curls. They have a bezel share that cuts silver and gold bezel with a roller it still curls 24-28ga. They Rio Grade N.M. For small jewerly tools.

 

[hillzofvalp]

I haven't worked with nickel for a while..and it's only been .375" strip. I guess I felt that it was going to be difficult to cut out of 12.5" roll but now that I think about it it's probably not a big deal if you are careful pounding out the edges.

 

[Chalo]

Why nickel and not copper?

 

[hillzofvalp]

copper is a bitch to spot weld 300*2*2 times

 

[Chalo]

I see.

Spot welds have pretty small contact area, usually.

 

[hillzofvalp]

Problem is that copper doesn't have much resistance... So what little heat is created is then heatsinked away by the good thermal transfer capabilities of copper as well! Making it very difficult to get a good weld unless you know what you're doing

 

[Chalo]

Right; copper interconnects imply soldering. You can heat the solder joints however you like, though.

 

[hillzofvalp]

And that's not recommended by A123 for joining cells, and you end up getting inconsistent resistance between cells and more heat, possibly damaging cells even during the soldering process. I have tried to solder spare a123 cells for little auxiliary packs.. It works but u have to really heat the cell up

 

[Chalo]

And that's not recommended by A123 for joining cells, and you end up getting inconsistent resistance between cells and more heat, possibly damaging cells even during the soldering process. I have tried to solder spare a123 cells for little auxiliary packs.. It works but u have to really heat the cell up

My experience is that you build up a nice little pad of tin on the strip, heat the strip from the back side while placing it on the battery, and get out of there as soon as the solder wets the terminal. I've never done it to lithium batteries, though. But I have on lots of NiCd and NiMH and even alkalines.

Chalo

 

[hillzofvalp]

Yeah. If you are inclined to learn about it more.. you will find reports of the A123 M1 cells being a bitch to solder. If you find pictures of a soldered A123 pack, you will cringe at how messy it was. I've soldered RC NIMH before, and that was super easy.. so I can see where you're coming from

 

[etriker]

http://rcflyers.org/rcflyers/page11/assets/A123%20Battery%20Pack%20Assembly.pdf

Soldering instructions for A123 cells.

 

[ambroseliao]

I am planning on using a sheet metal nibbler which should minimize any warping of the nickel foil.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=sheet+metal+nibbler&_sacat=0

 

[ambroseliao]

Well, I tried cutting the tin sheet that I have with the nimbler and found that it was slow and tedious and the nimbler kept jamming from the little cutouts. Very frustrating. I finally just picked up a pair of kitchen shears and cut the tin strips I needed with no warping whatsoever.

 

[hillzofvalp]

Easier than we thought.

 

[Kin]

Wouldn't tin be much easier to cut than nickel..?

*I guess that also depends on the thicknes.