DIY copper bus bar
Alright after my last post about messy battery cables http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/28283107.cfm and seeing Westend's pic for his DIY wire box I figure I will do the same. Li...
Forum Discussion
Growing up in Kansas, we learned early how to wire simple things while working on cattle ranches and farms. One of the things that was common to use, was copper pipes for buss bars. I learned to do it differently than what has been previously described. So when I was building one of my 2 battery banks (2 AGM 6v & 10 FWC 6v) I used this method here, too.
What is different, is that I took 3 different sized Copper pipes. (1”, 3/4” & ½”) polished them up with a wire wheel and inserted them into a succeeding pipe (nesting). Thus providing even a larger area of copper. Then flattened them with a sledge hammer (I fulltime so I don’t have a garage or work shop to work in) out in the desert on a rock. Bent the appropriate angles with a pair of Vice Grips. Measured for proper locations for the mounting holes. Then I wrapped the entire homemade Buss Bar with black electrical tape. Then cut and removed the tape in the areas where I needed total connection with the adjacent surface I was attaching. So far, this system has been in use, for 5 years now. Below are pictures of this work.
b
What is different, is that I took 3 different sized Copper pipes. (1”, 3/4” & ½”) polished them up with a wire wheel and inserted them into a succeeding pipe (nesting). Thus providing even a larger area of copper. Then flattened them with a sledge hammer (I fulltime so I don’t have a garage or work shop to work in) out in the desert on a rock. Bent the appropriate angles with a pair of Vice Grips. Measured for proper locations for the mounting holes. Then I wrapped the entire homemade Buss Bar with black electrical tape. Then cut and removed the tape in the areas where I needed total connection with the adjacent surface I was attaching. So far, this system has been in use, for 5 years now. Below are pictures of this work.
b
