Battery terminals are the

electrical contact An electrical contact is an Electronic component, electrical circuit component found in electrical switches, relays, Electrical connector, connectors and circuit breakers. Each contact is a piece of electrically conductive material, typically meta ...

s used to connect a load or charger to a single cell or multiple-cell battery. These terminals have a wide variety of designs, sizes, and features that are often not well documented.

Automotive battery terminals

Automotive batteries typically have one of three types of terminals. In recent years, the most common design was the '' SAE Post'', consisting of two

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

posts in the shape of truncated cones, positioned on the top of the battery, with slightly different diameters to ensure correct

electrical polarity The following Outline (list), outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to electrical polarity (also called electric polarity). Positive and negative polarity * In electrical engineering, electrical polarity defines the direction ...

. The "JIS" type is similar to the SAE but smaller, once again positive is larger than negative but both are smaller than their SAE counterparts. Most older Japanese cars were fitted with JIS terminals.

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

, and other

automobile A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, peopl ...

manufacturers, have also begun using side-post battery terminals, which consist of two recessed

female An organism's sex is female ( symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and ...

3/8" threads (SAE 3/8-16) into which bolts or various battery terminal adapters are to be attached. These side posts are of the same size and do not prevent incorrect polarity connections. L terminals consist of an L-shaped post with a bolt hole through the vertical side. These are used on some

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

car A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people rather than cargo. There are around one billio ...

motorcycle A motorcycle (motorbike, bike; uni (if one-wheeled); trike (if three-wheeled); quad (if four-wheeled)) is a lightweight private 1-to-2 passenger personal motor vehicle Steering, steered by a Motorcycle handlebar, handlebar from a saddle-style ...

s, lawn and garden devices,

snowmobile A snowmobile, also known as a snowmachine (chiefly Alaskan), motor sled (chiefly Canadian), motor sledge, skimobile, snow scooter, or simply a sled is a motorized vehicle designed for winter travel and recreation on snow. Their engines normally ...

s, and other light-duty vehicles. Some batteries sizes are available with terminals in many different configurations, but two main configurations are: # positive on left and negative on the right corner # negative on the left and positive on the right corner. Terminals can also be both on the long or short side of the battery, or diagonally opposed, or in the middle. Purchasing the wrong configuration may prevent battery cables from reaching the battery terminals.

Marine battery terminals

Marine batteries typically have two posts, a 3/8"-16 threaded post for the positive terminal, and a 5/16"-18 threaded post for the negative terminal.

Zinc battery terminals

Zinc battery terminals are an environmentally friendly alternative to lead battery terminals. These types of battery terminals were designed as a result of environmental directives such as Proposition 65 and

RoHS The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive 2002/95/EC (RoHS 1), short for Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, was adopted in February 2003 by the European Uni ...

. Zinc battery terminals offer advantages over lead alloy-type battery terminals. These advantages include increased electrical conductivity, increased corrosion resistance, and reduced lead removal costs.

SLA battery terminals

The most common sizes of sealed lead acid (SLA) batteries use Faston tabs, but some larger batteries use L terminals, while some very specialized designs use other, sometimes proprietary terminals, such as older

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

camcorder A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-sw ...

batteries (of the type used for

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

shoulder-mounted camcorders).

UPS battery terminals

Batteries designed for use inside a portable

uninterruptible power supply An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or uninterruptible power source is a type of continual power system that provides automated backup electric power to a electrical load, load when the input power source or mains electricity, mains power fai ...

(UPS) typically use Faston tabs, often with an adapter cable between those and the UPS's internal battery connectors. Larger external battery packs use a variety of connectors, including the Anderson Powerpole MultiPole series (as used by Tripp Lite), which are color-coded and keyed for specific

voltage Voltage, also known as (electrical) potential difference, electric pressure, or electric tension, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a Electrostatics, static electric field, it corresponds to the Work (electrical), ...

s. Very large batteries as installed in battery rooms such as are found in datacenters use bolted connections from cell terminals to bus bars or flexible cables.

Dry battery terminals

Most cylindrical dry batteries (such as the

AA battery The AA battery (or double-A battery) is a standard size single cell cylindrical Dry cell, dry battery. ANSI and IEC battery nomenclature gives several designations for cells in this size, depending on cell features and chemistry. The Battery nom ...

) have a projection at one end (positive) and a flat base (negative). These mate with metal strips or springs in the battery holder. Six-volt lantern batteries typically feature two coiled, cone-shaped spring terminals, designed to mate with flat contact plates on the inside of the battery compartment. Some lantern batteries instead feature screw terminals, while still others instead feature pin holes. Nine-volt batteries have snap-on connectors.

Button cell A button cell, watch battery, or coin battery is a small battery made of a single electrochemical cell and shaped as a squat cylinder typically in diameter and high – resembling a button. Stainless steel usually forms the bottom body and ...

(watch batteries) have terminals as both flat sides.

References

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