No problem. I had shot that video some time back and wasn't sure if anyone would be interested in it. I have one more I shot of opening the Dell battery packs that I'll post as well.They are a bit more of a challenge to open up.
Cool, I see these for a great price on ebay and possible to build a big battery for a very reasonable cost. Way cheaper than anything new and imported. And Japanese batteries rate much better than Chinese according to some testing I saw. Following!
@@douglundy5755 It was about 6 yrs. ago I processed these packs. The cells retrieved are still going strong in my power wall, they get cycled about 30% every day.
@@The4Crawler I found an HP pavillion with eight 18650s and looking for more! Im just using the laptop charger to build a recharging device for testing.
Do you have a video that goes over your solar power charging station? I'd like to see how that is configured and how that works. Also, you mentioned that you charge the batteries, then you perform a discharge. Is discharging necessary for litium, 18650 batteries?
This video shows a version of that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5DBeo5EElbk.html I've used a number of RC battery chargers, like the iCharger 1010 that supports operation from up to 18VDC and also has a regenerative discharge feature where, if connected to a battery bank, it can use the energy from discharging the battery under test into the main battery bank. Yes, I find that it's best to first charge the 18650 cells up, let rest for a week or so to check for self-discharge, then do a full discharge to measure the capacity, then recharge them to storage state. Then I can sort out cells of low capacity and match up cells of similar capacity to build the ultimate battery packs.
Hi! Thank you for sharing all this info. Can I ask you a question? I am thinking of replacing my old battery with a new one for my Thinkpad W510 and I don't know if there is an issue if instead of getting 50++ (as the original) I get a 70++... Do you know the difference and if they will perform differently? Many thanks in advance! Best, Jo
Generally I think that is OK, as long as it's the same voltage battery pack. My old Gateway laptop had 2 batteries, one had just a single set of cells in series and the larger battery had 2 parallel cells in series and thus double the capacity. In your case, it's likely 2 parallel cells in the lower capacity pack and 3 parallel cells in the higher capacity pack.
Have you by chance ever come across any batteries intended for the thinkpad x60/x61 tablet model? I am trying to do a rebuild of an old batter with new cells, but the first one I tried to open ended up getting somewhat torn up on the outside, and since I want to use it for its original purpose, that is obviously something I want to avoid.
I suppose that's a good idea if you are planning to repair the battery pack by replacing the dead cells. In my case, I was just tearing the battery packs apart to recover the cells inside.
Is there a way to check if the purchased lenovo battery is genuine? Or what the things you should check when you purchase a battery? Any tips will really help us in getting value for the money.
what brand of 18650s are those? can the case you opened be closed back up? the BMS that comes with those packs, can it be replaced, and the on-board chip has its code already loaded? if you took a 6-cell Lenovo (thinkpad E535) and replaced all the cells, so they arent mixed old & new, will the BMS recognize them? assume the new cells ratings match old ones. thanks for a great video!
I think they are Panasonic, judging by the p/n: GCR18650E: secondlifestorage.com/showthread.php?tid=1734&pid=23828 I suppose if the case were opened carefully, it may be able to be re-closed, I didn't investigate that option. Also didn't look at the BMS but I imagine if it's simply based upon voltages it should have no problem with new cells. Not sure where things like capacity/mAH and state of charge readings are stored, again never looked into that. But one way to find out is try it on one pack and see if it works plugged back into a laptop.
That is covered in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nmtdTgMeXjI.html The pairs of cells seemed to average around 3900mAH or 1950/cell and the initial voltages were all over from near 0 to over 4.0 volts.
Dobrý návod, jak vyhořet. Použití tohoto návodu je možné jen v Africe na Sahaře, aby majitel takto opravené baterie mohl rychle zahrabat hořící notebook do písku.
I've never looked into the operation of these battery packs. You might want to contact who ever you purchased the battery from, perhaps it's defective or maybe they have an idea on how to get it to turn on. It may be the internal battery management system (BMS) has shut off somehow and there's a procedure to follow to turn it back on.
I have a Lenovo 45N1010 70++ battery that stopped charging. I know its the battery because replacing it with a another battery in the same Lenovo W530 is charging and works perfectly. I was wondering what would cause the battery from charging? I'm tempted to try and open the battery and charge the cells individually. Would you know of anything in the charging circuitry in the battery that would prevent the battery from charging?
There seem to be 2 main causes of that issue. One is that one (or more) of the cells inside have gone below the cutoff value that's set inside the battery mgmt. circuit (BMS) inside the battery. That causes it to shut down. In that case, you might be able to individually charge a low cell and/or replace it to get it working again. The other main cause, from what I've heard, is that the BMS itself has failed. Probably hard to repair that, might be able to replace that BMS circuit board with one from another battery.
@@The4Crawler I spent sometime this morning and opened the battery. All the cells are good. I had a little over 11 volts with each battery no more than than .03 volts difference between cells. I have a balanced charger but since the cells where that close I am just manually monitoring the cells for now while I am charging. I certainly would like to know if there is a known problem like a simple in line fuse. I just started to look on the board with some tracing. I think 2 pins at the connector have to be shorted with a resistor to turn on the circuitry. I need to get more details on that.
@@n1kkri Might try searching the net for any troubleshooting tips or technical information on either the battery p/n or the p/n of the BMS board or the specific IC part numbers. Maybe you can get the pinout of the battery connector to try getting the battery to turn back on. There may be a broken solder connection some place or a short between two traces or connector pins. You might also try discharging it with your charger down to around 3 volts/cell and see if that does anything to trigger the BMS on.
@@The4Crawler About a year ago I watched a youtube video showing someone with an adapter that plugged into the batterty connector making it a easy way of measuring voltages. The adapters where all part of kits that where expensive. One of those adapters could come in hand should I want to make a easy external charger. None of this is really practical unless you can get it to charge from the laptop. Its just fun stuff to play with.
@@n1kkri Yes, having a mating connector is very helpful. I've made those sort of things for power tool batteries and other rechargeable devices. But the laptop batteries are more complicated and unless you have a source for the exact mating connector, that's hard to do. I guess they design these things to not be easily repaired and expect you to throw away the old one and buy a new one. At least that gives us power wall folks a source of decent used cells since it's often the BMS that fails.
I didn't get any of those in this batch of battery packs. I did do some in my first batch but I didn't get any video of processing those. The main change I did with those was to separate off one single cell from each 3P group and set those aside. My powerwall battery packs make use of paired cells, so I'll need to process those single cells separately and ultimately pair them up for use. I still need to get to those single cells.
I think these came from eBay. Wish I had picked up more, they were from a seller who had a big collection of "damaged" battery packs, mostly with broken latches and connectors. I bought one, found good results, but by then there was only one lot of 20 left. Other folks find them at the local recycling centers.
I recall the connectors looked the same, so there's a good chance you could do that. I have my old Gateway laptop and it has 2 different capacity batteries, one with single cells (1P) and one with double cells (2P) and both work fine.
@@arturafar8304 They make battery packs in all sorts of configurations. In my old Gateway laptop, the std. pack was 3 cells, 11.1v, 2200mAH. The extra capacity pack was 6 cells, 11.1V, 4400mAH. Other mfgs. use 4 and 8 cells.
I wanted to ask you regarding my Lenovo laptop battery, it's almost dead and needs to be replaced. So I was thinking if I can replace the battery cells themselves instead of buying a new whole battery. What do you think about this idea? And what battery cells model should I pick? (Lenovo ThinkPad L430) I would really appreciate your help.
You could give it a try. I did that with a Craftsman power tool battery: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b5AOBwx04kA.html Best bet is to open up the case carefully and see if you can gain access to the cells. Often a voltage check will tell you if one or more cells are bad. You can often find the cell identification information printed on the side of the cells and if so, best to see if you can order some replacements as close as possible to the existing cells.
You should have separate every one cell to check if every one is ok..you cannot tell if the one of the pair is dead or no voltage cause it will measure 3.7 if the one is good because thier parallel..I hope you understand.
I do this for pairs that don't test out. But since my battery modules utilize pairs of cells and since these cells have been paired up their entire life, if they test OK in a pair I use them that way. Ones that test at half normal capacity or less, I do separate and test individually. Of those, it's very rare to find one good and one bad cell, they both test very similar to each other in capacity. Others have found similar results: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LRJS_iTyymA.html
I didn't save that information and those battery packs have been torn apart. It looks like the 70+ battery modules are still available on-line, they probably list compatible models.
If you have access to another battery or know someone with a similar laptop, you could try swapping in another battery or put your battery in the other laptop and find out where the problem lies.
@@mocanulaurentiu5812 That's usually the case. It may be one or more cells inside the battery are bad or it may be the circuitry inside that reports the condition of the battery to the CPU in the laptop.
Assuming this is in reference to the Linux TLP battery utility? If so, yes that would be an option if I has a Lenovo laptop on which to plug these batteries into.
