That only goes for prismatic cells (boxes rather than cylinders). The reason is that they tend to swell up while charging if you don't compress them so manufacturers will specify a clamping force required for the cells to keep their shape. If they change shape in such a way that you can observe it then your cells are toast so better stick to that mfg indicated compression. There are a number of articles out there that show how to do this the right way and also some that get it hilariously wrong. The direction to compress the cells in is in such a way that the electrodes remain under compression perpendicular to their surface. So compressing from the top and compressing from the front will do absolutely nothing.
You're welcome. I've been working for more than a year on a blog post about the various safety aspects of building battery packs but it's a never ending rabbithole of stuff to research and learn about so I haven't gotten around to publishing it.
Hah. Post it on HN, and let Cunningham's law help you :)
Snark aside, I feel that on HN, there are enough actual proper experts who will point out avenues of research and gotchas that a single person chasing down rabbitholes on their own is unlikely to discover.
you might be surprised what this particular single person is likely to discover on their own
one of jacquesm's previous personal rabbitholes was designing and building a wind turbine from scratch, down to cutting out the stator and rotor windings for the generator from sheet metal
No, I don't care about SEO at all. I just would like this info to be out there for hobbyists and tinkerers as well as people that are contemplating designing something with Lithium Ion based batteries in it. But because it is safety related I really want to get it all right and with little room for error I get a lot more careful about what I publish. It will happen.
