GreyWireGordon

One instrumentation detail worth adding for anyone wiring up thermocouples per this thread's advice: type K thermocouples are cheap and adequate for this application, but route the leads away from any high-current cable runs. Induced noise from a nearby 300A+ conductor can produce a reading that's off by several degrees, enough to matter when you're making decisions at the margins this thread describes. Twisted-pair thermocouple extension wire, kept a few inches clear of the main current path, solves it.

The custom enclosure requirement is the part casual readers will underweight. A standard 16S prismatic bus bar kit assumes uniform cell width and consistent terminal spacing — Blade's long-format geometry breaks both assumptions. You're not adapting an off-the-shelf kit, you're designing bus bar geometry from scratch and getting it torque-tested before you trust it at pack current. That's a real engineering project layered on top of an already uncertain salvage supply. Budget the time accordingly, as the article says, and then budget more.

Worth noting for anyone reading the $5,070 breakdown as a benchmark: that's a clean job on a house with reasonable existing infrastructure. Older service entrances with deteriorated grounding, undersized weatherheads, or knob-and-tube remnants anywhere in the system can add real money fast. Get an electrician to physically inspect before you quote from a forum post, not after.

The 96V-to-144V current math in this thread is correct, and I'd go one step further on the connector question BatteryNerd92 raised. At 400+ amps continuous you're not just sizing cable — you're sizing every connector, lug, and busbar in the circuit to the same current rating, and most hobbyist-grade lugs are only rated for intermittent duty at those currents. A connection that's fine at 200A can run hot enough at 400A to anneal the cable insulation over time even if it never technically fails. Voltage headroom buys you margin everywhere in the system, not just in the obvious spots.

MidwestMechanic's AC induction + VFD idea is the right instinct and I'll add the number that makes the case concrete. A 15-20hp three-phase industrial induction motor off a scrapped CNC line or air compressor runs $200-500 used, all day long, versus $4,650 new for a Warp 9. The catch nobody mentions: you need a VFD rated for regenerative braking (most industrial VFDs aren't — they're built to drive a load, not absorb energy back from one), and that's where the savings get eaten. A regen-capable drive at the right voltage and current rating isn't cheap either. Worth doing the math on the whole system, not just the motor line item.