Opening this poll to gauge interets in creating a group order for a DIY aluminium case for creating your own style Foil Drive GenII assist.
The brief is a case fully compatible with FD original parts to allow the DIY builder to create their own version. This will allow experts to use only the case, while more amateur builders could buy batteries, nose cones or motors from the original FD website.
Please if you think this is a good idea, I would appreciate you filling the google form attached.
If this makes sense and there’s anough interest (5-10 cases) I would be happy to run this project!
Batteries are the main topic as well as the case in my opinion.
If no case, the only doable thing is a backpack foil assist style.
I my case, having someone able to help me getting an aluminium case for doing my own project is really a good thing!
So yes, I upvote this and am looking forward to others so we can gather a little group and work together on this.
What about a solder less battery build, that could be assembled by ordering parts and assembly, without spot welding and potting?
I worked in the past on solder less batteries, (2016) but did not have issues of waterproofing then…
I will work on such concept to make my 12S1P setup airplane safe (up to 20 cells per person is easy in most airplane companies) See last link, same idea.
Seems like the travel is a bit of a minefield with some flights going well and some not so well. Nothing clearer for airlines than individual cells and the limit appears to be 20 batteries under 100Wh.
Much simpler than the multiple 6S1P and the new cells are pushing 6S1P over 100Wh anyway.
I just ordered 24 RS50 cells to play with - 12S1P with these new tabless cells could be perfect.
Making a solderless battery is easy, making one able to handle 50A per cell is a whole other game, and making it as a kit that can reliably be assembled by amateur technicians and be lifetime reliable and safe in salt water is an almost impossible challenge.
@Bzhwindtalker I’ll be interested to see if you come up with something. This reminds me of a few other compression based battery packs I’ve seen.
The N.E.S.E modules, which are already targeted at a DIY crowd. Form factor appears similar but they actually only make p-groups that then are screwed together to make series connections.
Then trampa actually sells a pcb based battery kit. However being a 7P pack and having 20A fuse on each cell, this pack has much lower amps/cell than you are planning.
@Bzhwindtalker designs is great and a big contribution to the community but still requires skills/tools which only the more advanced DIY person has.
My initial idea was an aluminium case which is fully compatible with the FD parts so the community can buy the parts that don’t have resources to get.
Doing some rough numbers you could put together something quite similar to an assist MAX for about 1.5k. You’ll need to interface the VESc via a bluetooth and you wont have the nice user interface that FD has but you’d have saved about 3.5k for a couple of days of work!
