1366 The Ultimate Secret To Battery Making 

Well said sir! A reality check for sure! In my 30 plus years in the electrical, electronics and mechanical engineering industry, I have realised many things. Firstly, just how little I actually know. I have heard it said many times that to be accomplished in any field you will needed to have spent a minimum of 10,000 hours doing it. Even though I was blessed with a natural aptitude for electronics and mechanics, I have put in considerable effort throughout my career. Does that make me an expert? Not in the slightest. Here are some useful formulas I have discovered in my career. 1. Information without application = the hole in a doughnut. 2. Constant trying + constant failure = learning. Learn from it! 3. Knowledge + personal experience = wisdom. 4. Your knowledge + teaching others = learning on both sides. There are many things I do not know, my natural curiosity about the world around me and myself has led me to many exciting and challenging things and discoveries. We only stop learning when stop being curious, or when we are dead, either way, it's death. Remain curious about everything, which I can see you do for sure Rob. Plus one thing I always try to make sure I keep my ego in check by reminding myself I'm just like everyone else, I'm winging it, I'm an idiot trying to learn!

I'm excited to start working on your hemp battery design. This is great advice. And yes I'm 15 too lol. We aren't all know it alls, so I'll expect to be practicing for years. :)

Rob, you are a really good communicator and educator. I also enjoy watching you "doing". Well done and thanks.

I'm currently in the process of making a kiln, following your video instructions. It seems so simple in your videos lol. I can't tell you how many problems I've run into. It's been about two months, and I'm still working on it. Not to mention all the other things I've had to buy/make (like a sheet metal break, pop rivet gun, sheet metal nibbler, etc.) just so I could properly manipulate the materials I had. I think I'll be done next week lol

Your advice is very good. I have made several of your projects right now I am working on an "Edison" iron nickel battery. I have the space and it is a very robust battery that meets the needs I want. Thank you for your contribution to learning I appreciate it. A hello from the northern USA.

Great advice the best teacher ever on ciencia the beginning in thinking requires a great teacher thanks

Yes! My channel was, mostly, about highly efficient wood stoves. I got loads of comments from people that never built a stove. "Build it. It'll work!", I told them. They just wanted to be entertained and dream.

To the Author, you have the 'biggest' channel cause you provide the information for us to do it ourselves 😅 this is gold because it spurns tens of thousands of people to create themselves 😮 you obviously know this, and if U can teach one they can teach more with a knock on effect 😮😮

Dr. Murray, once again you've nailed it. It really boils down to practice. But the big thing you touched is to look back. I can't at once recall the amount of material I've covered looking back. Some is absolute garbage. It made me a little less intelligent for that moment in time. But the other material has completely enriched my practical applications. The thing about looking back, is to remember, the experimenter was looking for an out come, there are rabbit holes they never went down one might find that have applications today. I have seen some of these myself. Some of these are beyond my build abilities currently. But they are still fun to mental model for the future when my skills have grown.

Well said Rob! Can scratch "batteries" and substitute most anything.

BRO! You're the coolest channel on RU-vid. You're cooler than 80s Hip Hop! I started from a kid picking things to bits. Now I power lights in my home from watching you from E-cigerettes thrown on the floor. I pick them up and chuck them in a bag in the garden as the case keeps them weather proof till I need to use them. DONT WASTE NOTHING!

I don't think I could ever get through all the videos my fav Author makes😅 this guy has such a broad range of knowledge that is at a level perfectly suited to me😅😅

I always saw this channel as a way to share ideas to try ourself, you incourage that on almost every video and in the comments, and for me all the zinc bromine battery variation you showed us were mindblowing

This is all so true. People who only read and do not make, do not realize that much of the hands on in science is more art than science. I gave my class a choice of projects, one of which was to make a zamboni pile. I had never made one before. Two groups tried this out and it was not as easy as they seem. Lots of practice required. In fact one thing no one mentions is zamboni's act like self charging capacitors. So a few layers basically instantly discharges when you attach a probe, very little energy density. We ended up having to use an oscilloscope to measure the peak charge.

Rob it's amazing how far you've come over the years since I started watching you making tools in your kitchen. One day, some day post covid I may finally drag myself down from Oxford to the coast & actually get to meet you. Anyhow I hope you & your family have a great Christmas & New year Hugs

I think getting the smaller sealed lead acid batteries for motorbikes was the best start at making a battery. Free and easy to take apart. I could easily see the construction and make changes. All the difficult construction was done and all that was needed was the experimenting with different ideas which is great fun. I covered the plates with all sorts of pastes from activated carbon to fine metal oxides etc. never changed the world but it sure did rock mine 👍🏻

Rob, I think you've the patience of Job and heart of a teacher. Sad to hear that instead of being grateful, some seem to think they are entitled to demand you share EVEN MORE of the the wealth of your knowledge. In all truth, even if you were "Sitting on some magic battery", it'd be YOUR"S, not theirs! You have the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to the fruits of your own efforts & intellect, to share, or not, as YOU ALONE see fit! :) Cheers & Merry Christmas!

I love your enthusiasm. I agree one has to start. A new ingredient:people like me are more afraid of not finishing, a project, than not starting. I think often , it’s where the fear comes from.

Great video, great advice, not just in battery making but in all aspects of life, try before criticizing.

Absolutely the best advice I have ever heard on energy!

Really, this video could just as well be titled "The Ultimate Secret to Making Anything". The point made here is eminently practical. People so often get stuck in hypothetical fantasyland rather than doing doing.

Good point rob, you are a professional. And professionals make things look easier than reality, this plus youtube editing requires timelapsing.. we don't often realize the amount of time some things take in reality.

Preaching the truth, brother. Thank you.

So true. 1hr a day learning something new. Even if you sit there and stare, Just do it.

02:19 I have walked down that beach on that windy day... And it wasn't just the café that was closed, it was the whole of St Michael's Mount. The moral of this story is:- Don't go to Cornwall in February.

These tips and tricks should be applied to all parts of life 🖤 as well as batteries

Looking backwards is what 'drives' me! I need to know how things were discovered to formulate my own thinking. When I find out how the first person was thinking when they discovered something, it lights my brain on 🔥 fire, I now 'live' for this! Knowledge kills Fear😮 this is someone else's quote😮 but it's right & have given me solice in the last few months 😅😅

I like the way you addressed all these issues. Was good hearing some one with great knowledge and skill saying get off your backside and try 👍

I like your battery talks, a lot of good stuff, and you have spent a lot of time making them. and i have watched over the years, I especially like your graphene oxide on A4 paper, reducing with strobe light, in your scooter. So lots of respect, and Thank You. It would be nice to see you make millions of pounds and have a new lab like Elon Musk

I've found my best performing experimental batteries to be not at all the ones which I ideated, rather the ones that I deviated.

I have practised with home made super capacitors, earth batteries, liquid batteries etc. As you mentioned most of time i have learned how to not be successfull. But at the same time i have also learned other informations that can increase my success rate while trying to make offgrid reliable batteries. Such as, knowing which electrolyte lasts longer than others. Practicing is a fun thing to do.

I did enjoy your video, I wont ask what comments have been coming in, I can probably guess. I saw a nice little aphorism on RU-vid saying 'Trying to argue with an idiot is like trying to play chess with a pigeon, it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and the strusts around with it's chest puffed out as though it's won" I can't take the credit for those lines, but I wish I could!

I saw many tutorials of making batterys and i think that, baterys made in a factory are very good sealed baterys and have high preasure gases inside and that is what gives high ampers, and is very dificult to make at home a every good sealed batery.

Finally another battery video!!!

Well said rob. Love the chanel. Gets my gears turning every morning. So true. Always easier said than done

Been watching your videos for a good while now. Found them while researching batteries and charging for work, I'm a weights and measures inspector in the U.S. and we were looking into Vehicle charging stations as a device we may need to inspect. That project kind of fizzled because we don't have test procedures from NIST yet and there just aren't many, if any, of these charging stations being used in commerce yet. Even after that I have continued to watch your videos because frankly I find your tinkering interesting, the basic mechanical information useful, and should I decide to tinker with this sort of thing I know where to start to get the basic information needed to make a little battery that could potentially make something go round in circles. Keep up the good work sir perhaps one day you could build a giant wind powered mech and take over England. The views on that would be awesome :P jk

Excellent video, you hit the problem dead on.

Whenever im testing new chemistries i usually make four single cells, even if im repeating the same thing over and over again. Almost all the time the first one is absolutely garbage in comparison to the second/third. Another plus is that i can immediately start testing how they behave in series with actually usable voltages. Feels much more informative if i can see that i can charge a phone on it instead of blindly charting voltages/amperages on one cell just to be disappointed because i did some simple mistake.

Merry Christmas Rob and keep up the good work!

If you want theory, get friendly with the teacher. If you want reality, get friendly with the lab-technicians. Rob is best of both. Big up, you Rob. 👏

That is how I first found you reconditioning batteries and after watching you I recycled my old one and bought a new one now I am cured

Start small, practice and subscribe. Why is it that the best kept secrets are the ones in plain sight that everyone just ignores? Keep up the good work and down to earth common sense Robert… now if you will excuse me, I’m off to the workshop to perfect the unicorn poo powered car I dreamt up earlier today-I’m using it to break the land speed record tomorrow!😁

Great advice. You didn't mention Bagdad batteries. Copper pipe and iron rod is available almost everywhere, they need to charge and discharge quite a few times to get to full potential held charges. Then there is the drawback of the cells eventually eat themselves.

One thing you forgot in your Intro was the word "Consistency." Critical, because if you're making a true BATTERY, a grouping of cells, they all need to be as closer to identical as possible.

I'm in the, slow and difficult, process of converting my 60's vehicle into an EV. I'm using a Nissan motor and control circuity and up to six ( I think ) modular storage cells. I'm thinking 48v with enough voltage ( in series ) to propel the van up to 120km/hr max. The modules should be light enough to pull out and put into the boat or cottage. The motor electronics already exist, the batteries will be done by a battery builder OR if the ideal battery happens to turn up on the market, I'll purchase. You give great advise, I would add to your "process" don't be afraid to hire a professional when needed.

Good talk Rob.

Get 'em Robert!!! 😁👍

Thank you Robert for the video, funny thing I came in from working outside I was going to watch a few vids the one that popped up was this for you and actually it was a bromine battery videos very first one I watched from you about 2 years ago. Must be telling me something..😁👍🤔

Love it. Great advice

Great advice....

The should, would, could argument is a cousin to the "If you do it right it will work" argument. Of course it will work if you do it right, but if there's no right way to do it to get the results you're looking for, you're still stuck on square one. If I flap my arms right I will fly, but nobody has ever found the right way to do that. :)

Thank you for all that you do

A recipe for a battery: 1 potato 1 strip of copper, 4x20mm 1 strip of zinc, 4x20mm tick the strips into the potato, and connect some wires.

The problem to battery making in this day and age is not that it's difficult but everyone wants to dominate the market and produce a gigaton of batteries with their "special chemistry". However there lies the problem, mass production will kill any "revolutionary" battery tech. Battery making should go back to the age old idea of decentralized local manufacturing done by tradesmen that is the only way you can produce enough batteries to power the world. But hey that won't keep that infinite growth model of mega companies going now does it.

If Galvani could make a battery in the late 1700s, we ought to be able to do at LEAST that, or better! Cheers.

youre so right! i got all the stuff to make an iron air battery, i want to try using an different membrane, but ive been watching youtube instead lol, ill take your advice and actually put it together

Im making a lead acid battery bank for my cutlery factory!! Hopefully charged by solar and wind!!

one source of battery usage that most people are not aware of (I was not until a friend started talking to me about using used ones for a home solar and wind system for storage when its not sunny or windy) is large warehouse machinery like forklifts, and they have massive lead acid batteries probably one forklift is accounting for the same percent of the battery usage as say 1000 laptops, which I found just crazy, and thought since I had not known about exactly how big of a battery those have, (don't own a forklift sadly though I really would love to have one, say for moving large milling machines around a shop) until that friend pointed it out to me. Makes me realize there are probably a million other battery use cases that I am still not aware of and many I probably will never even find out about. TLDR of all that is if one is not aware of this use case, then when tallying up the batteries in the world they think of, it would be missing I think a huge chunk of the percentage that incidentally is as you said, lead acid, LOL. (and this video made me just realize how that bit of info could effect something like ratio of types of batteries in use)

Reality spelt out, Roberts. 😄 🤣 😂 Brilliant 👏

I have all the bits to make a rudimentary nickel-iron battery. it's not as efficient as a lot of other kinds but has a potentially MASSIVELY longer lifespan than almost any other battery(20 years or more) and no toxic chemicals like lead or cadmium are involved. I just have to get around to devoting some time to play with it. Each cell is 1.2 volts under load and charges from 1.6 volts per cell.

Awesome information Robert

After about 10 months version xxx of the wind turbine will be complete. It integrates a little of all those tested here. Hold thumbs.

Solid advice

I could make a battery if I tried. I'm a factory mechanic and that takes all types of skills. Just get back to me in 50 years and bring some lemons.

Practice can be a costly endeavor. Necessarily, but costly.

Well said sir

I wonder why batteries at tossed. They got stuff inside that just needs to be separated. It just makes sense that if Lithium is scarce, then we can chop used batteries up and separate materials. I remember doing that with old alkaline batteries for fun. Then you just use the materials to coat a separator like you have done before.

How about an update on the wonderful battery you were planning to make. That seems not to be mentioned anymore??

Good video rob👍I don't want you to build any batterys for me but another one of those Christmas poems would be nice

Oh no, I thought I might get around practicing and leave it all up to you...

Hahahaha I will try to remember the could-would-should rule XD

I wish I could make a ferroelectric battery that uses uranium and thorium electrodes, and have rochelle salt electrolyte with a magnetic field to make it conductive. Though lead and aluminum and Epsom salt in two jars with a salt bridge. That should work for a bit. But the flaw to metal fuel cells use aluminum, iron ,felt with acid and peroxide oxidizer. But regenerating the peroxide is hard with keeping the acid electrolyte.

Hi Robert. Love your channel! I am looking for the video in which you mention the gel electrolyte which is indestructible. Could you please post the link?

Can you tell me how to get your ink and foam that you used in the remaking of a lead battery and could you take all the lead out been watching you for years off and on and I'm very impressed on your work. One more thing on the hub motor on wash machine when you run it as a generator how do you get 60 cycles or do you have to change it to DC then back ? Thank you for any help from Iowa small town USA THANK YOU

True for more than just batteries.

something I learned from one of the first videos I watched of yours, which was on making copper nano particles, and being the oxygen scavenger chemical class, made me think maybe one of these in a battery system where oxidizing is how the power is released, and deoxidizing is what is going on to recharge a cell but over oxidizing can ruin the cell limiting the amount of charge cycles, what if we used an oxygen scavenger like ascorbic acid to limit this oxidation damage, increasing the amount of charge cycles a cell can undergo before being ruined, and even more so a way to replace this stuff since it seems it gets broken down or consumed by scavenging that spare oxides to keep them from damaging a component of a cell? (maybe done how we used to top off lead acid cells with water when it gets low,) Between that idea, and the one you did a video on of super batteries where one side is coated in graphite like lead acid batteries to increase aspects as desired, I am just wondering how far those could take one. Time to plant some citrus trees for that extra vit C ;)

Strangely enough, the secret to batteries and long marriages are exactly the same. Because Science! 😁👍 Add: And for the overall instance of the best inventions, we mustn't forget random chance and complete accidents.

Lok backwards to move forward, this can be said with almost all improvements on any technology. The basics on everything have been tried before, taking these basics and looking to improve upon them is where the practice and learning really comes into play.

i enjoy;) thx!

Mr Murray Smith,I'm looking for a battery system that recharge by flushing the electrolyte solution. Baghdad battery, any suggestions ? Inexpensive and non polluting. Vinegar or citric acid. Lol vitamin c powered, healthy not ? Thanks for all the enlightening work you do !

I have a idea for a better battery . I have seen videos of workers that saw the top off a battery and rebuild it then weld the plastic back together , my idea is to make a round cell with a screw on lid with two glands for rods to serve as the positive and negative terminals . The advantage is that there will be no need to saw the top off and weld it back on , the rebuilder will simply unscrew the top like a jam jar . I want to make the prototype from an actual jam jar , it will be a NiZn battery the first problem I have encountered is where to buy the nickeloxyhydroxide electrode in a form I can roll up into a cylindrical cell. Can you offer any advice ? Thank you in advance , Robert

Has anyone tried diy C02 sugar yeast mixture to make a steady stream of bubbles rise in a tube and spin a wheel? Or maybe compress air?

This is an awesome Channel you give us insight the stuff we would rarely have you may be a product of the next free energy so I thank you for all your information I really like the one about the micro capacitor and I like the other ones to almost every one of them. Was that micro capacitor or was that multi- Mini capacitor

Is there any way to use an electret as a battery or perhaps a voltage source for a simple circuit?

By the way how's the progress with the graphene batteries

Had to be said, and well said it was.

Same applies for welding or anything else in live

Great thoughts Rob.....if I may indulge parenthetically on your thoughts of start small....make baby step improvements ....change only one thing at a time.....develop test method to compare those small improvents (i.e. 5% better energy density or volumetric power density or cycle life etc.) For ur simple Zinc Bromide I have have over 50 variables in the works to make it better. Thank God it's just a hobby or u could go insane. ;>)

Batteries NOT in series & regardless of size are always about the same voltage. It's like you are tapping into the ether Tesla referred to. Batteries will also have to be exactly alike to be connected together if you want proper longevity. These means they have to be exact clones. Hence why it's hard without proper machinery exacting measurements of materials used per cell

Forget about making me a battery I want a cake so make me a cake LOL

I can show my nephews how to solder IC chips, but they still can do it themselves, without bridging the pads!

Great talk.👏🔥💯👍

Home made lead acid batterys are the way to go diy agreed and is what I am working on unless the second hand forklift ones are cheap enough But I gotta admit the new solid state 3D printed batterys are looking good😁but not doable at home like you say

I have been following your channel for some time now, mostly for the battery and super capacitor related videos. I am curious to know what your current (2021) thoughts would be regarding options for DIY single residence scale off-grid batteries. I realize there are tons of variables, but I am thinking of an "average" 4 person family in a modest 1800sf home.

LoL I think the "I already know" folks are worldwide ranging from about 12-25ish yrs old on average. I usually just smile and say "I wish I knew half what you say you know" and chuckle with a wink.😉

I think the best battery to build would a nickel iron battery because of the history of them.

ca you build a large 55 gallon carbon zinc or aluminum battery? capacity test it too?

Is it possible to make powerful DIY batteries? Like for making ebikes?

Hi Robert, what happened to the Super Ink for super battery video? Extremely intrigued by the aluminium coating and preservation properties. Come on share, please.

Can I use cobalt oxide as substitute to bismuth trioxide? I can't make a bismuth trioxide in my place as nitric acid is a controlled chemical as it is being use in dangerous drug.