Preliminary Research

What’s the most common way to connect the other end of the nickel strip to the board?

It seems like hobbyists generally just use a bunch of wires (they call them balance leads because the PCB they’re connecting is a BMS). Here are some examples:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dD5KmM8ciU He solders wires that are connected to the PCB to the nickel strips and then spot welds the nickel trips to the batteries. He explains it during 6:09-6:37 and 8:04-11:55
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9hsqDr381o He also solders wires between the PCB and the nickel strips.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKg-jIrr_JE This guy as well.
- https://www.electricbike.com/home-built-battery-18650s/ These wires are especially nice.
I guess we could build ourselves something like this, but probably not–it’s bulky and unstable without a ton of glue and overengineered for something that doesn’t need to be disassembled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ShpdgspXvEU

Can we spot-weld nickel strips to batteries as a connection to a board?

If we don’t want wires like the above examples have, then there’s this option I found on this discussion forum: https://smtnet.com/Forums/index.cfm?fuseaction=view_thread&Thread_ID=19072 I looked for the thing Rob’s talking about and it seems like they do exist, just not from sellers I recognize. Here are some examples:
- https://www.made-in-bangteng.com/products/smd-pad-pure-nickel-tab-in-reel-for-bms-10000pcs-0-5-8-10mm-pure-nickel-tab.html
- https://www.litechpower.com/product-detail/SMT30X20X3NICKELPLATE.html
- We might need an ENIG PCB to be able to use this strategy
This guy solders his directly without wires. He doesn’t specify using special SMT nickel pads, so he probably just uses normal copper ones. Even if we don’t trust his explanation because it’s pretty vague, the way he bends the nickel strips down is nice, so I included it.
- https://skill-lync.com/student-projects/project-1-mechanical-design-of-battery-pack-38
- Can we just try soldering a nickel strip to an old copper pad to see how it goes?
I couldn’t find anyone doing it with a through-hole and no wires.

Is this something that we can get done externally?

All the projects I’m looking at seem to lean towards doing it yourself. Lots of people even make their spot welders. Seems like we can buy a decent spot welder for ~$400 https://cellsaviors.com/blog/best-spot-welders
There are lots of companies that do battery pack assembly, but they don’t seem up our alley to me I guess–maybe I just don’t understand the question.
- https://www.alexandertechnologies.com/services/battery-pack-design-assembly/
- https://packetdigital.com/capabilities/battery-pack-assembly/

Conclusion About Making Tester Pack

Coming soon…