Soldering to batteries. (without the BOOM!)

TitaniumHamster · Post by **TitaniumHamster** » Sat May 13, 2006 9:53 pm

Ooooh! This place smells like new section!

I'd like to make this post short and simple. How do you solder to rechargable alkaline-style batteries without blowing them up? I like my hands. And my 20/100 vision.

TitaniumHamster · Post by **TitaniumHamster** » Sat May 13, 2006 10:21 pm

anotherperson wrote:There's some sort of device you can buy designed for RC hobbyists that holds a set of batteries and has this spring loaded thing that quickly snaps down the tab you wish to solder, or something like that.

If you are going to solder some batteries, I'd suggest you rough up the terminals with sandpaper, tin it with as lower temp iron you can use, tin the wire/tab you want to use, then reflow the battery terminal while holding the wire on it.

By the way, I have only done this once, a long time ago.

Thanks. I've always known about the springy boxes though.

Would flux help? I mean, like LOTS of flux?

shmagoogin77 · Post by **shmagoogin77** » Sat May 13, 2006 11:08 pm

i tried soldering onto batteries once
its not good

Post by **Gamelver** » Sat May 13, 2006 11:57 pm

yeah, the metal on batteries is, unfortunately, usually pretty hard to solder to. I've done it before, to NiMh batteries, and it worked...but flux and scraping it with sandpaper definitely helped.

Usually, on normal nimh battery packs, there is some kind of tab soldered on there, so it's most likely that it won't damage the cells too much, if you don't leave the iron on it for too long...

(by the way, it's pretty late...and some of the stuff mentioned above may be quite incoherent, at least by my standards

...ugh, I need sleep...)

Post by **Skyone** » Sun May 14, 2006 12:34 am

Usually soldering straight onto batteries is hard... Just get some battery holders.

dankicksass · Post by **dankicksass** » Sun May 14, 2006 12:43 am

You know what the awesome thing about AA batteries is? They're replaceable! Soldering directly to your batteries defeats that ability. Just don't do it.

Nonsense Man · Post by **Nonsense Man** » Sun May 14, 2006 6:01 am

how would you hook up a battery like this to a psone cause i'm probally gonna start building a psonep

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Sun May 14, 2006 6:39 am

anotherperson wrote:By the way, I have only done this once, a long time ago.

Your safety is not guarenteed.

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Sun May 14, 2006 8:15 am

what about hot glue? is that hot enough to damage NiMHs?

TitaniumHamster · Post by **TitaniumHamster** » Sun May 14, 2006 9:11 am

dankicksass wrote:You know what the awesome thing about AA batteries is? They're replaceable! Soldering directly to your batteries defeats that ability. Just don't do it.

Ok, maybe I should explain why the hell I would want to solder to batteries NiCd AA batteries in the first place and not use the springy battery holders. I'm building a NOAC with a extremly small amount of space inside (no cart slot) and barely have room for the 4 batteries, neverless 4 holders with wires crisscrossing between.

joevennix · Post by **joevennix** » Sun May 14, 2006 9:28 am

Nonsense Man wrote:how would you hook up a battery like this to a psone cause i'm probally gonna start building a psonep

Buy two chargers for it, gut one and use the holder part as a case for the batteries.

dankicksass · Post by **dankicksass** » Sun May 14, 2006 9:35 am

TitaniumHamster wrote:
dankicksass wrote:You know what the awesome thing about AA batteries is? They're replaceable! Soldering directly to your batteries defeats that ability. Just don't do it.
Ok, maybe I should explain why the hell I would want to solder to batteries NiCd AA batteries in the first place and not use the springy battery holders. I'm building a NOAC with a extremly small amount of space inside (no cart slot) and barely have room for the 4 batteries, neverless 4 holders with wires crisscrossing between.

Are you putting a NOAC inside an original NES controller? I'm actually considering putting one inside a Camerica FreedomStick (Advantage knockoff, wireless) just to be uber.

shmagoogin77 · Post by **shmagoogin77** » Sun May 14, 2006 9:41 am

Nonsense Man wrote:how would you hook up a battery like this to a psone cause i'm probally gonna start building a psonep

in the book it has a way to i think
or ask SNESpGuy he did it

G-force · Post by **G-force** » Sun May 14, 2006 12:27 pm

I remember reading about a guy who made a LED light in a Tic-tac case, and he used two AAA's and soldered to them to save space. So it can be done. I imagine a lot of flux and a high heat iron would help a lot if you were to do it.

loup · Post by **loup** » Sun May 14, 2006 12:47 pm

Your best bet is to find a battery that has tabs already welded onto it and then solder to the tabs, I've got a couple around here with tabs on them and I was going to take a picture of it so you'd know what you were looking for, but I couldn't find them.

There is actually a tool specifically made to actually weld tabs onto batteries that doesn't damage the battery, but it's a bit expensive if you're not planning on doing it to thousands of batteries.