Voltmeter question...Oh, and a cable size ?

[sunking]

Originally Posted by JohnnieB

I agree with everything except a $100 set of cables lasting the life of the cart.
The 2Ga silver soldered eleven cable set (42V Sepex) I have, cost a little over twice that.

Guess we are in the wrong business huh? I would never use soldered cable, but that is just me. I have access to the tooling and/or know where to rent them at most electrical supply houses.

Originally Posted by JohnnieB

I haven't tried it yet, but I picked up a tube of NO-OX-ID A Special.

Little late now but if you apply the grease to the Wire Skinner before crimping, it will never fail as it seals out moisture and air forever. The stuff is made to last 50 years. That is why all utilities, electric, telecom, water, and bridges mandate its use. Just be sure to buy the electrical version. I have used it on all my carts and have never had a connection failure. There are battery plants with 50 years of service still going strong using the stuff and that includes outdoor battery cabinets on the coast.

Personally I don't have to worry much about it anymore with Lithium batteries. All inter-cell connections are buss bars coated with No-Ox. What cables are used were made by myself using No-Ox on wire skinners and mating surfaces.

[DaveTM]

Originally Posted by sunking

Guess we are in the wrong business huh? I would never use soldered cable, but that is just me. I have access to the tooling and/or know where to rent them at most electrical supply houses.



Little late now but if you apply the grease to the Wire Skinner before crimping, it will never fail as it seals out moisture and air forever. The stuff is made to last 50 years. That is why all utilities, electric, telecom, water, and bridges mandate its use. Just be sure to buy the electrical version. I have used it on all my carts and have never had a connection failure. There are battery plants with 50 years of service still going strong using the stuff and that includes outdoor battery cabinets on the coast.

Personally I don't have to worry much about it anymore with Lithium batteries. All inter-cell connections are buss bars coated with No-Ox. What cables are used were made by myself using No-Ox on wire skinners and mating surfaces.

I for one am glad you don't have to worry. And for sure, I'm happy that you have this "access" to tooling and\or "know" where to rent said tooling from these "most electrical electrical supply houses." These must be "special" supply houses that charge $.25 to rent these "special" tools in order to keep your cost below $100. (As I would consider the cost of tool rental to be a part of the cost of making the wiring.)

So, from what I've gleaned from you post is....well, absolutely nothing. Not one worthy piece of information. Oh....other than you have some "top secret area 51" place to acquire your components to assemble your wiring for your carts, and a place to "rent" the tooling for almost nothing. Yeah....I'm buying all of that.

Thanks for posting...and in the future, please refrain from doing so on any of my OP's.

Dave

[JohnnieB]

I was already retired when I got a golf cart, so I didn't build my cables, I bought them.
http://www.cartsunlimited.net/Batter..._Upgrades.html

Even if I had gotten a cart before retiring in 2009, I would have still bought them because I don't like doing heavy cables and anything over 10Ga is heavy to me. Most of my soldering was done at the other end of the AWG spectrum, sometimes using a soldering tip about the size of a straight-pin, looking through a 10X magnifier, but usually 20ga or thicker.

When I got my 2Ga silver soldered cables, I took them to the hospital I had been the Director of Clinical Engineering at and checked them out woth a piece of NIST traceable test equipment called an Electrical Safety Analyzer. Its primary purpose is to measure the leakage current on the case and patient leads of medical devices in micro-amps, however it also has an Ohmmeter function that resolves down to 0.001Ω with a 5/4 split on the 100 micro-ohm digit, using Kelvin clips.

Anyway, the longest of the cables (about 3') would make the one Milli-ohm digit flicker back and forth between 1 and 0, while all the shorter ones settled on a solid Zero. Since the intrinsic resistance of three feet of 2Ga copper is about 0.0004689Ω and the toggle point for the Milli-ohm digit was 0.0005Ω, I'm fairly certain that the silver solder joints don't have had much resistance.

On the other hand, I doubt if I would have gotten the same results had regular solder been use (Sn/Pb) since both Tin and Lead are way down on conductivity charts while Silver is more conductive than copper, but Silver-solder is Tin based.

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Dave, you posted while I was composing.

You might have us mixed up, I'm the geek that worked on stuff that required a TS/EBI clearance just to look at with the covers on.

[DaveTM]

Originally Posted by JohnnieB

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Dave, you posted while I was composing.

You might have us mixed up, I'm the geek that worked on stuff that required a TS/EBI clearance just to look at with the covers on.

JohnnieB, All of your post have been very helpful. You provide "Battery and other electronic's for Dummy's 101" for so many applications. I appreciate you post as well as ScottyB's post. I know I don't have you and Sunking mixed up.

Thanks.

Dave