I forgot to report back on the condition of the purple celled âhoverboardâ pack.
I charged the pack up and drained it into 2 - 3 ohm power resisters in series. After doing this I estimated that pack to have a capacity of â4108 mAhâ or about the rated 4Ah. It could be that it is a brand new pack. Maybe thrown in the bin by someone who just didnât want to risk using a hoverboard after seeing them in the news.
Apart from the wimpy weld joints, the pack seems to be well made. The included Chinese cells seem to perform well, how safe those individual cells are on there own is unknown.
Also of the last 3 packs I reported on here,
The pack on the left, a Ryobi 24V pack, charged up and is working perfrectly. It looks as though it is very lightly used and originally was rated at 2.6Ah. I tested it and estimate that this pack is good for 2.4Ah. My theory on this one is that the person that owned it threw it away because the tool it goes to broke. Ryobi has discontinued their 24V line, so that person had no other options other than ditch it.
I have a working 24V Ryobi weed wacker and can put this pack to good use
Regularly coming across big packs these days. I got excited when I pulled the 56v pack on the right. Ended up only having 14 Sanyo UR18650RX's at 3.67 - 3.68v. This is the second big pack I have found that was labeled at a voltage greater than nominal voltage. In the past, such a pack would be labeled 50v.
Very well built pack. 2Ah cells dated S37 (September 2014). Haven't tested yet, but the pack looks unused. No dust, dirt, or scratches to be found, even in the corners and contacts. Maybe it was a display model being disposed of by the store. Maybe HD is closing out a product or product line.
that brown glue might be the cause of self discharge.
that curse has been known over 40 years.a built in failure point.
peeling a bunch out of a uniden hr2510 right nowâŠ.
No brown glue and I don't think there has been any self discharge. It appears the pack was never used or charged. Every cell is sitting at a nice storage charge. I think HD is clearancing a product or product line and this pack probably belonged to a product that was put on display without the pack in it.
ImA4, you beat me by just hours to this pack :weary:
But the good news is mine is the 4Ah version. If yours contains 14 cells, mine should contain 28.
But the bad news is I donât have much hope for the condition of mine, it looks like it has seen some rough service, perhaps even some abuse.
Before I open it up I measure 36V across the output terminals. 36V/14 equals on average 2.57V per cell. If all cells are 2.57V then I would hope this pack is just fully discharged. That wouldnât necessarily be bad, and the fact the test button blinks red rapidly could mean it IS fully discharged. Well, at least it blinks
Iâll know more when I take it apart.
If you have the same cells, I think they are rated for down to 2.5v (IIRC). Looking forward to hearing what you find. I wish I hadn't tore mine down now. It has all the balancing circuitry (tons of wires) self contained.
I had that same feeling after I tore down that âAnton Baurâ Pack in Post 137 of this thread
Bad news and Good news.
The bad news is this pack is toast!
The good news is that seems that only a few of the cells are shot. Itâs looking more and more like a new pack that got wet, maybe even while still at Home Depot. I have taken voltage readings on a number of cells and they either read 0.0V or 3.6V. That could be a new pack that got wet. After cleaning up the top of the battery case where it mates with the tool, I donât see any wear on the slides.
It looks like only the bottom first inch of this battery got wet, as though it was sitting on the floor and water pooled underneath it. To me it seems that if each cell that went bad shorted thru itself, the circuitry of the pack could have been undamaged.
I am inclined to not mess with it, just harvest the good cells and be done with it. I am charging a 4Ah cell-pair with my OPUS right now. It will take the rest of the day to know what the results, capacity wise, are.
EDIT:
I just realized that if the bottom 8 cells are dead, that would leave 28 - 8 or 20 cells good. That would be 10 cell pairs in series. The 36V I measured at the external connectors before I opened it up divided by 10 equals the 3.6V that I measure across each good cell.
More proof this could very well be a new pack that got wet!
Your analysis makes sense. When I saw your pics and report, I figured someone swapped their used pack for a display pack. Then the swapped pack was recycled when the product was pulled off the floor. Your reasoning seems more plausible. It also explains how new the wrappers look in the bottom cells in your pics. 20 maybe like new 22 continuous amp UR18650RX's. I'm rooting for you/them. Mine will remain untested until I need them. For now, they continue to be kept in a storage state.
â4079â
Thatâs the number OPUS reported back to me when I discharged one of the cell-pairs. I could only discharge at a maximum of 1A. That would be 500mA from each cell, not a very high draw at all. But even so, I think it sort of confirms the undamaged cells will be in like new condition.
When and if I ever get around to removing the good ones, I will then be able to check the internal resistance.
I found 3 of these in the recycle bin yesterday. They are NiMH packs, 1 is rated at 9.6V and 1050mAh, the other 2 are rated at 7.2V and 1800 mAh. What caught my eye and the reason I pulled them was âMAHAâ I know that name from my MAHA charger. Just had to explore and see what was inside of these.
Turns out the 9.6V pack had what measures out at 8 - 16270âs. Is there such a cell?
The 7.2V packs contain 6 - 16420âs?
I am testing the cells now. If they have decent capacity, they could be useful, size wise, some day.
[quote=snakebite]
just give it a coat of poly finish.
that is after you sand it smooth,stain it,ect.
dont want out battery storage/display rack to be ghetto LOL.
[quote=teacher]
Your right âsnakebiteâ, that would take care of my âunlikelyâ scenario taking place.
And with your other suggestions, âun-ghettoâ it alsoâŠâŠâŠâŠ.
I find all kinds of interesting and unusual stuff in the bins.
Here is something that is neither unusual or perhaps interesting. But it was interesting to me.
What we have here is 8 - AA NiMH cells. What was interesting to me was their physical condition, they looked fairly new. Also I recognized the 6 Duracells as the Chinese LSD types.
Why did someone throw them away? THATâs what was interesting to me, and I was curious to find out why.
Also, what kind of person throws away cells in a nice new âZipLockâ bag
Both kinds of cells were made in China, however I have much higher expectations for the DuraCells.
I have some of those very same cells in my stock, I also have some of the better âDuraLoopsâ that are made in
Japan. Here are both, the China DuraCells can be recognized by the black top while the Japanese âDuraLoopsâ have a white top. If you look closely at this picture you can see Made in Japan on the white top and Made in China on the black top. Remember, I found 6 of the Chinese black tops in the bin.
So what I did was number each cell and popped them into may OPUS to see where each cell sat.
Of the first 4 DuraCells it looks like 3 are in a good state of charge, while cell number 3 looks damaged.
At this point I took them out and popped the other 4 in.
Cell number 5 is looking good while the other 3, not so good.
At this point I thought perhaps cradle number 3 of my charger was bad as both sets of cells read NULL in position 3. I tested those cells on other slots and confirmed it was the cell itself, not the charger.
I am in the process of testing each of these cells for capacity. Here are the results of the first batch of 4.
These cells are of the LSD type and are rated at 2000 mAh and test close enough to that number to be called âlike newâ
I also capacity tested the other 4, and only cell #5 tested at full capacity, around 2000 mAh.
So as of right now, 4 of the 8 cells tested as âlike newâ while the other 4 have issues.
Right now I am in the process of seeing how much improvement I can effect on the other cells using the OPUS ârefresh modeâ along with a Zap or 2 on the NULL reading cells.
I will report back on that later.
I think you are right about the reversed charge.
To those that havenât realized it, when cells are drained in series, if one cell drains to 0V it can be reversed charged as the higher capacity cell pushes current through it. VERY bad for the weaker cell, usually killing it.
I did Zap the 2 NULL cells and it did bring them back to life, although not a healthy life.
After the Zap I charged all 4 of the cells that were not up to snuff, then drained them measuring their capacity.
First trial, remember cell #âs 3 and 7 were the NULL cells.
At this point none of these cells are worth keeping, buts letâs try one other thing. The âcharge refreshâ mode of the OPUS. What that does is cycles the cells thru a number of charge-discharge cycles, to âgive them some exerciseâ
Here is the result of that.
Better, but still not good enough, these 4 cells are going back to the bin. But not until I try one last thing.
Right now I have the 2 DuraCells in the OPUS charging at a 2A rate, just to see if THAT helps.
Probably not, but letâs see what it does.
EDIT: it didnât help, those 4 cells are toast.
So, I ended up with 4 good cells out of 8.
Probably what happened with these 8 cells was that they were in an 8 cell device, or perhaps they were 2 pairs of a 4 cell device and 4 of the cells malfunctioned, perhaps due to operator error or just bad luck. Even though 4 of the cells were good, their owner didnât or couldnât tell good from bad.
So they all got tossed.
Iâm impressed those cells are dead like that, i have some of those duracells and your probably right, reverse charging is about the only thing that would kill them
When I first found them it looked to me as though the original owner mixed the 2 cheap no name brand cells with the 6 DuraCells. If that was what he did, then I was expecting that ALL 6 Duracells would be good and only the no name cells would be bad. If all 8 cells were used in series, only the cells with the lowest capacity (the first to deplete) would be reversed charged. I was a little surprised, something else happened.
Anyway, those were my first thoughts, my premise, and snakebite beat me to my reveal.
I said I was going to throw those 4 back into the bin, but for fun I am not done with the 2 bad Duracells yet!
Those 2 have approximately the same capacity, so this morning I fully charged them up and let them fully discharge thru a double AA light that I have driving a 219C.
When this light is on high it draws 2A and climbs as the cells deplete.
Then I charged them up again at a 500mA rate.
Here are the latest numbers.
