How can Vinyl Downspout material make a useful battery housing?
I received one PM asking about that, so I'm sure others are wondering as well. I need to add some photos, but it is 5am and I'm not going to get out of this warm bed yet, and the best light for photos is hours away. So I'll try to describe it without using the requisite 1,000 words.
I have 6S packs from both Turnigy at 5AH and Zippy at 8AH. I could use either for the bikeE but the Zippy require fewer interconnects and as it turns out they fit the downspout tubing better, except they don't quite fit. More details in a moment.
Part of this process is affected by me getting anxious to get this bikeE on the road. Much of my Turnigy pack is tied up on the Mountain bike so I can use the Zippy more easily without disturbing the already working Mountain bike. I have a few loose Turnigy packs, but only 500 watt hours. I have six of the Zippy and they are (a bit less than) 200 watt hours each. My goal is to put six Zippy packs on the bike for now. That will give me 1200 watt hours optimistically so perhaps I will have 900-1000 useable watt hours and give me a 50 mile range riding efficiently. The seatback, rear tail and underseat areas will all be available to carry other things. The batteries will be out of the way.
Spacewise on the bikeE I have 24 inches on top of the main beam, and 30 inches below. So we can take three Zippy 6S 8AH packs which are each seven inches long, and place them end to end on top of the beam and have a pack that is 21 inches long. The other three similarly packaged below the beam. I'm making these packs 24 inches long to allow some room for connections and the HVCLVC pc board.
This works out especially well for me since I'm planning to use 12S, so each of these two "tube packs" can be 6S with three 8AH packs in parallel. If I make them with the output connector being a 4mm dual banana plug (like a Turnigy battery) they will plug into my already made wiring adapters that series the packs and feeds the Deans that came on the controller.
So I will cut the top of the 24" long vinyl downspout tube off making a "U" channel, lay in some foam, lay in the 3 batteries end to end, lay in wiring, more foam, invert another cut U tube down over that and slide it down till the batteries are tightly captured, and tape or vet-wrap the two U's together into a tubular pack 2x3.5x24 inches long. Then these tube battery packs will be mounted above and below the bikeE beams, probably with vetwrap for now.
For charging I'm getting a Hyperion 1420i so I can balance charge the whole pack at once.
Most of the effort to do this is in making the wiring fit into this long packaging.