Fein tool does fantastic job cutting these batteries, but If you push electric Fein cutting tool too deep, you will damage battery walls. You can cut above cooling strips only though. The gap in the raw between cooling strips is too narrow for cutting with Fain tool. Pay attention not to push it too deep. Use left or right corner of the Fein blade tool. I mean go with one corner of the tool, kinda pushing it sideways but not vertically down. It prevents suddenly plunging the tool deeper down. As soon you cut the plastic, don't push the tool far more deeper. It will damage the wall of batteries. This kinda job requires a great control of the Fein tool. You must know what you doing. More left or right, you will damage a battery.
Did you guys had to deal with glue? I have a 6.4kwh battery module and it's my 3rd day trying to remove the cells from the pack. I removed about 20 of them, the reason for the slow progress is that they used glue in between the cells! I use your method like in 9:11 but instead, I use a trowel and hammer in-between the cells to break-down the glue and plastic. It's a very slow and tedious process but it works for me. If you guys have any suggestions, please let me know, cause sooner or later I'll probably go crazy with how long this will take :) I will say this video helped me tremendously on finding methods to dismantle the battery! Thanks alot!
Very informative video, thanks for sharing! How long did it take both of you to disassemble the entire module? Also, what are some safer ways of doing this? Do you think any robotic tools could have made a difference?
about 3.5 hours? its not difficult, just takes a bit of time, i think just braking it apart with pliers like we do alot in the vid here works well. some say i should use acetone to loosen up the glue a bit but i havent tried it. Maybe putting the battery in a freezer for a while might make it more brittle and easier to brake apart? Not sure about robotics, seems difficult, im not an expert on that though :)
I used isopropyl 99% alcohol, ammonia solution and acetone. I did this only with negative tip of the 18650 of the battery. Guess what. After 30 minutes soaking in acetone the gunk get so soft and it just fell a part. wow....Its was so great. 99% Isopropyl alcohol and ammonia has no effect. Its probably dangerous to soak the positive end of the battery, because these chemicals are conductive and can shorten your batteries. So acetone works great if you let the negative end to soak for like 30 minutes in it.
Would you mind measuring with a vernier the thickness of the busbar plates ? Referring to the plates that are wire bonded to the battery that you ripped off with pliers. would be appreciated.
Seems like a bad way that Tesla is making those batteries. At some point when they need to be recycled it should be a lot easier to take a part than that, shame on Tesla engineers for making them that way. I think lots will end up in landfill as the recycling effort is too high when the 18650 batteries are much older and have no use. In the salvage market there will be people like you to spend time and effort to get good 18650 cells at least.
Yeah, but maybe this is better than the foam they use on the model 3, which seems to make it even more difficult to dissasemble, i dont think any electric car producers makes it easy to change single battery cells? and these packs have a coolant line altso which makes building it more challenging?
For any DIY folks, we are a Solar Energy & Ecology Institute in Malawi, our Innovation Lab is looking to reuse Tesla's EV battery modules and individual batteries giving them a second life for use in mini-grids, systems for hospitals, medical centres, schools etc. as well as use in projects like this for use in e-bikes and other battery run projects. Malawi is one of the least electrified countries globally with less than 1% of the 85% of the rural population connected to the National grid. We are looking for enthusiasts to join us either in Malawi or virtually to work on these projects. Feel free to contact me through a linked-in message or post a reply and I will send my whattsapp contact.
