Introduction ¶
A while ago, my dad bought some high density and high current LiFePo4 cells from BatteryHookup. The cells didn’t come with any holders to help maintain the overall structure of the pack. In fact, you can’t even purchase holders for these cells online. This is a major problem when assembling the battery pack since the cells are more loose and more of a hassle to connect to each other. So my dad asked me to make a holder for these cells in Fusion 360.
Design ¶
Fusion 360 Model
The design process for making these was pretty simple. All I had to do was put the metal tabs on top of the batteries and measure the distance between the cells. I then accounted for that offset in Fusion 360. That way, the distance between the cells that was created by the holders was perfect for these 2 hole metal tabs. For the dovetail joints that I modeled to connect the holders together, I just used a simple boolean operation. I didn’t resize the new female dovetail to be larger. This turned out to make the bond between the holders very strong.
If you’d like to download this specific Navitas cell holder, I have posted the STL files on my Thingiverse. Since I didn’t model any clearance, I would advise making sure your printer is well tuned before printing the holders. Even with a well tuned printer, you will still need to apply a bit of force to get the pieces to connect together. For my holders, I used a rubber mallet to get the pieces to fit together.