Unacceptable Cable Lug

Hi,

I am working on a project with someone at the moment connecting hundreds of batteries 2v 240Ah together for stored energy.

The joining links between the batteries are not that great on close inspection, I took one apart to look at it.

When you take the cover off, the rubbish is revealed. The reason I took the cover off is to confirm my thoughts about the cable having the current carrying capacity reduced by having a hole drilled in it. Basically they have put a round cable in a hole and then flattened the terminal to hold it, then drilled a hole through it.

The lug is so tight its actually cut through a significant number of the strands and severely damaged a large number of the remaining strands putting a dent in in creating a hot spot and reducing the CCC.

Then what is left is a thin edge to the strands stuck into the edge of the metal lug, the remainder of the lug is not going to be as effective as the first edge, but even then, a lot of the strands have been severed.

As you can see I have cut it back and fitted a proper 70mm2 'PEPL' cable lug to the end using the proper tools, this does not damage and of the strands as is very tight.

Surely as it is, this cable does not comply at all with any British Standard and in my opinion should not be used as it if you are reliant on the size of the cable for its current carrying capacity which you are, not only will this give you high resistance joints through your battery storage, but it puts you at a far greater risk of fire due to the fact you will be trying to pull more current through the cable than the terminal can take due to the damage in the manufacturing process.




So I stripped it off and put a proper end on it, a round end to suit a round cable, just missing the shroud as need to source a suitable one.



Your thoughts please... I would like a couple of reg numbers to show the customer as he has around 500 of these cables at present, and I am going to be making him some new ones and he will be getting a refund from the Chinese company he bought them from!