Battery Building Tools

What tools and supplies does it take to build your own Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) battery for ham radio? This is the start of a small series I plan to write for the DIY battery and offgrid community.

Here I will try to list some tools that I find essential, and later, nice to have, for a person who wants to work on small pack and large battery making.

Here’s the list (links below may contain affiliate links that pay me a small commission at no additional cost to you):

Essential tools

• Fire extinguisher close by
• Ammo can or small galvanized trash can (i.e. a fireproof container for charging)
• Safety glasses (to be worn at all times while working on your battery)
• Wire cutter/crimper
• Wire stripper*
• Scissors/shears
• Soldering iron [1, 2*]
• Large and small screwdrivers
• Multimeter
• Anderson Powerpole crimping tool
• 14.6V 2A AC-to-DC charger for LifePO4 batteries.

Essential battery making supplies

• At least 4 LiFePO4 cells
• Spools of 18-, 16-,14-, 12-gauge wire, and larger depending on size and expected current of build
• 4S LiFePO4 BMS of choice
• Nickel strips (0.15mm x 8mm minimum)
• Anderson Powerpole connectors with 15A, 30A, and 45A contacts depending on wire gauge you are using.
• Bus bars for larger battery builds
• PVC shrink wrap for your battery sizes (measure width and height of your pack and add 10mm).
• Soldering brass coil sponges
• Solder spool
• Flux pen*
• Double-sided heat-resistant tape such as 3M VHB tape*
• Kapton tape*
• Electrical tape
• M6 or M8 ring terminals of different wire gauges for certain larger batteries [1, 2]

Nice-to-have tools

• Nickel strip spot welder* and car battery (at least 400CCA) (this borders on an essential since soldering bus bars is tedious and bad for cells)
• Hammer crimper* (for large gauges of cable such as 6 gauge to 1/0 gauge wire)
• Variable power supply for charging individual cells or top-balancing a parallel group of cells
• Thermal imaging camera to identify any potential connection or shorting problems
• Hall-effect clamp ammeter
• Battery cell balance meter
• In-line watt meter power analyzer
• Small neodymium magnets for holding nickel strips in place temporarily while soldering/spot-welding

Nice to have supplies

• Cell holders
• Active Balancer*
• Shrink tubing to cover exposed wire areas or keep wires together
• Zip ties
• Adhesive battery backing paper*
• Adhesive neoprene padding
• 12V to 5V 3A USB buck step-down modules*
• Mini voltmeters for attachment to battery*
• Latching switches to turn USB/voltmeters on and off*
• 5.5mm x 2.1mm 12V 5A DC (female) barrel plug pigtails if you want to build in a charging port to your battery.
• Bluetooth Battery Monitor*

* = AD6DM favorite item.

As you can see, many of these things are very specific to battery building (such as the spot welder or cell holders) but many of these things are great to have as a DIY engineer working on electronics in general. If you are serious about building a battery of your own, but not going to do it a lot, stick with the essentials. If you think you’ll be making more than a few, you can make life a lot easier by getting all the nice-to-haves.