Cordless Vacuum Cleaner Fix 

Was everyone else shouting at the screen - "I can see the tracks going round the edge of that board; you are going to cut them"?

It seemed odd that you put it together without getting the voltage meter out. Also seemed odd that you didn’t test the balancer before cutting the edges off. Lol

Good job!!! I'm glad that you were able to do this!! Hey.. have a vacuum cleaner a few more years of service!! And out of a trash heap.. well.. thanks for the video!!

I see the word "fix" in the title and begin watching, totally expecting this to not result in a fix :-)

First thing to do is... get out your DMM! D M M. *D M M* *_D M M_* I still don't know why you find that part so difficult, Julian! ;-) The *first* thing we need to know is the voltage of each battery (cell). And then with a charge test you can likely see one needs replacing. An "active cell balancer" seems like overkill here.

I thought I could see tracks as you moved the board in the light

re. being able to see the LED's, just cut a slot in the box, put some tape (insulation or even normal sticky tape ) on the outside of the case and fill the slot from the inside with epoxy glue such as Araldite, then remove the tape once the epoxy has set, you should be able to see the LED's light up through the epoxy. I've used this method on several projects and gives a good result.

"I should have done this but I haven't" - Me whenever i'm trying to bodge something.

Lidl Customer Service are very very good at sorting out Lidl problems like this ...

Couldn't you just have installed the extra pcb at an angle instead of cutting it? :)

"Don't want to blow it up unnecessarily". Keyword: unnecessarily.

That battery pack already has an awfully big PCB circuit so why would you think it doesn't have cell balancing already? A series charge controller (only) and 4 LED battery level indicator doesn't need that much so there has to be more to it than that. So I think it must have some form of balancing. Not "active" but some type of over charge and over discharge circuit for each cell. Adding a 2nd PCB in parallel *may actually cause disagreements* (different voltage settings) between the two and could cause problems. Imagine the active balancer trying to raise one cell while the OEM balancer thinks it is already too high. I don't think just adding a 2nd PCB without knowing what the 1st one is doing is such a good idea.

Nice video Julian but I see online that this item has a 3 year warranty :) I've taken broken stuff back to Lidl in the past and they have even exchanged things for me without a receipt! Top customer service indeed :)

At 4:20 if you single frame through (use the "" keys [well "," & "." actually]) you can see the traces bulge on the gloss coating reflected. It's not pin-sharp but good enough. Good fix, happy new year, thanks! :)

Our Dyson hand thing has also given up and a new battery pack from a dodgy ebay source didn't seem to make much difference... maybe this video will encourage me to take the battery pack apart and see what is going on.... thanks for reminding me I have to fix it. :o)

My wife is the same, vacuum and mop. Big house too. Hey keep a eye on vacuum clean, let's see how long it goes with the active balance unit fitted mate. Stay safe from Australia.

Nice Video! Thumbs up! In 6:02 the green Board,from where did you get those? Thanks for share! Bye Rudi

I thought the pcb rails were visible in an angle, but I'm very surprised that a balancer circuit wouldn't already be integrated by the manufacturer... does the new circuit create a significant drain on the batteries when not in use?

Wouldn't the original pcb have a balance circuit on it ?

I "fixed" a G-tech vacuum found in a skip. The vacuum itself was good, the cells in the battery were good, the circuit board however was junk so it wouldn't work. The only cheap fix was to gut it, rebuild my own 6S cell and wire it via a new switch directly to the motor. Works like a champ, use it all the time. The time it took me though I could have just gone and bought a new one! lol. Fun project though and learnt a lot.

A File made in my home town, just 300 meters away from my home.

"Don't do nothing" Grade school English teacher rolls over in grave. Oh well, the electronics industry are good😁

I think I saw these vacuums were back in my local Lidl this week. I bet they have a three year warranty - you could have got a whole new one. Always good to see something saved from the WEEE pile though.

Very nice repair, Julian. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy wife, happy life.

Julian, so do JLCPCB do BMS's? is that what the discounts for?

Was there a reason to cut the board and not the plastic cell holder was there something that didn’t show on the video, or aren’t you what we think?

Well, that sucks. Why can't manufacturers put in the self balancing circuitry in the factory?

Now that i think about it: These boards are a very weird way to achieve a voltage step up conversion. Imagine charging a tool battery with a 5V solar panel or so :) Just charge one cell and the board will gradually move the charge up to the others.

I haven't watched it all yet, but as I remember, it's the Buffalo Girls that go round the outside, so safe to cut the board. Not.

That poor ICR18650-26F will probably fail sooner than later and you have to fix your wife's battery again :) It will struggle with the current drawn by the vacuum, which is probably somewhere around 10 to 20A. The cell is specced for 2C max, so that's 5.2A. It's for powerbanks and laptops and such, not for power tools. A INR18650-25R would be suitable.

That's one thing China is doing for us, because stuff breaks so often we become better repairmen - lol -.

as it is a balance board all the leads should be the same length

What is the model number? There is a product recall for model SHAZ 22.2 D5, risk of fire during use or recharge. I could not quite make out the last number on your unit, I could see SHAZ 22.2 D? I think it was a 4 in which case the recall probably doesn't apply.

Biggest problem with these Hoover is the 1p battery pack wich over time gets higher internal resistance because of high load over his 1p arrangement cells I have a few Dyson v6 and v8 and I added another battery in parallel 6s 2p and now the load is split in half wich makes a huge difference on life time of the battery and run time In this case you can add more cells but on any Dyson it's easy job

1:50 - how does the balancer balance the cells when they're only halfway charged? I thought you could only balance at top of charge or bottom of charge?

Vacuholic.... Can't say I've pimped the vacuum cleaner as not sure where the wife hides it, but a recent 18650 upgrade to my ancient Ni-Cad Bosch drill was a revelation. Now I want to stick 18650s on everything

My experience of having a cordless vac in this situation was that even replacing the bad cell wasn't enough to bring it back to having good performance for long. After a couple of months I have now ordered a full set of high performance cells. Nice branded ones with 30A max output are only £1 / volt or thereabouts so if I'm going to the effort of taking everything apart then in future I'd skip straight to this.

Why won't you round 2.59V to 2.6? 😆 And 300mV seems to be your multimeter open circuit read at the moment.

Julian the 18650 26f cells are rated at a max discharge of 5.2amps MAX. please can you test that the vacuum cleaner is not drawing more then that or you might have a big problem with the cell overheating or worse. secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/samsung-icr18650-26f-cell-specifications.1783/

Sorry, Julian but isn't that green board to which the 6 cells are soldered a 'balancer' board. So why are you fitting another one in parallel? If you were determined to fit a new balancer, wouldn't it have been easier to entirely remove the existing board?

Get a sharpening stone to sharped the blade instead of snapping off sections

That samsung cell is rated at 5.2A max discharge. Maybe the originals are higher spec? Just like most other powertools, sometimes upto 15A. Maybe that is not the right cell for this purpose? Better be carefull with that,

Well done! I was thinking you could put 2 of the 3-cell balancers in but you made the 6-cell one work fine :)

you need a vacuum to clean out the vacuum whenever you empty it out, always a cloud of dust when it's done.

I can see the tracks, why can’t you?

wait. was the replacement battery all u needed?

You needed to test the balance board before cutting .. so you see the behavior before and after.

i wish to get a vaccuum wife too.. LoL

If it's a year old then Lidl offer a 3 year guarantee so you could get a new one from them for nowt.

Umm, 3 year warranty on that. Wouldn't have been as interesting a video though and I can imagine the grief for not repairing it immediately if not sooner.

Some cells have a smart/dumb??? Bms that kills the output circuit permanently to force you to buy a new pack. DJI and Matica do this, if you let it over discharge just once.

Sometimes it's better to bodge things, a bit of hot glue would have done

Is not recommend to solder directly the battery, because heat and lithium is very not a good idea, but you do what you want ^^

why not just replace the batteries?

I suspect you poor wife is always vacuuming up bit of pcb, that's why it get used so much.

Dremel

Why don't you just fix the problem instead of making the repair more complicated?

21:06 - Did you really just blame your wife for its failure??? I hope your wife or one of her friends don't watch this! 8-)

You start out talking about looking for bad cells, and then 20 minutes later after much screwing around with that active balancer you finally get around to it. I've got time to watch YT videos, but I've got no time to waste. Unsubscribing...