Look what I found in the recycle bin

My first HID was a Titanium Innovations Mega Illuminator Just scored Titanium Innovations Mega Illuminator $39.99 HID . Member 2100 (guru member) suggested the 55W ballast. The free auto kit I was given was actually a 35W HID china marked 55W. My Mega is still 12V SLA. I did buy a Tractor Supply broken clearance halogen and it was my first conversion. Ordered a 55W from one of the China sources but it proably 45W(?). To monitor voltage I installed an RC lipo pack monitor w/ dip switches to set voltage monitor with an led that I ended up covering with black tape to mute but is still visable.
Bright blue - Full charge
Cyan - Very good
Green - Good
Yellow/Amber - Low warning
Red - Batteries low
Something programable would be great but simple works. More voltage monitor options now that are digital and cheap. My last conversion was a dead battery halogen spotlight for free. Built the first pack from two matched 9 cell laptop packs from the same recycle bin that appeared new. Second one was built from two packs from member 18sixfifty. If there is an advantage to running true 55w bulbs and the price is right please clue me in.

Great idea. Something like this here. That will do good enough for me. Thanks :)

EDIT: Finally broke down that 40V pack I pulled from a HD recycle bin. Every cell, except 4, was at 4.07v. The other 4 were at 4.06v. Before breaking down the pack, the pack voltage tested at a little over 18v. So I expected some bad cells. Did a quick test of internal resistance on a few and they were in the high 20's to low 30's cold. If they are all good, I'll build a 4S4P pack that will be used to power a big HID light. When not in use, the pack will also kept in the trunk for jump starting purposes. The 2 cells missing from the below picture are in the process of being discharge tested.

Date codes are:

K3D3

So March 2013, if I follow sixty545's date code theory correctly.

EDIT2: If you ever come across one of these packs, grab it. Seems the control board in it must have failed or bricked out the pack, because the cells are behaving like they are almost new. So far 4 cells have been discharge tested and all are just under 1.3 Ah (1280 - 1296mAh) and have low internal resistance. I'm expecting the remainder of the cells to behave the same. So I will only report back again if any surprises arise.

That’s good to hear ImA4. The one I found in the OP was brand new and now that I have the tool and charger for it I have a perfect 2nd Battery
Recently I have found 2 more of these. One brand new that will not charge up on the charger, however it will run the tool. Another that I just found on my current trip is slightly used and shows 3/4 full. I haven’t tested it yet. I am hoping someone broke their tool and threw away a perfectly good battery.
More good news, I think you scored 4 - 10 cell holders out of this. I have some from Black and Decker bats that work very nicely for me. Hold onto the extra parts’ there may be other good stuff too

^
You have 3 so far? I guess I’m not surprised after tearing this one down. I expect to be seeing more of these showing up in recycle bins. Getting the control board separated from the pack is a little touchy. It’s thru-hole soldered to the pack in like 12 places with tin tabs. Little tricky to unsolder without creating a short. You can’t just cut the tabs. That will pretty much guarantee a short. The cell packs appear hard to disassemble as the tin plates that have tabs connecting the cells appear to be integrated into the plastic holders. Turns out they are just under a thin plastic cover that is seamlessly welded to the holders. So the plastic cover just rips up with the metal tabs. Once I finally figured that out the pack tear down went fast.

Yeah, there is are some other goodies in the pack. Quality electronic components (I think those FET’s you gave me came from drill packs). The cell holders are sweet. One thing I really like about this pack is the case. Super strong and it can be reassembled after the tear down. I wish it fit in the Thor Colossus. If it did, I would use it to build my 5P4S (Changed my mind from 4P4S as all cells tested great). I’ll eventually find a good use for the case.

got 8 new samsung laptop packs that were reportedly bricked by a bad laptop.
every cell in these packs were at 2.5v with very little deviation.pinkish red sanyos with white ring.iirc thats 1950.
all over 2000mah.i didnt try to figure out why they bricked but i suspect poor calibration in the bmc allowed the laptop to discharge below the “drop dead”point which bricks the pack.
this can occur in other types of packs too.
thats why a “bad” pack dropped in the recycle bin can have perfectly good cells.

If you can run you HID on 5S4P, you could use the BMS from a recycled Ryobi pack the balance charge to whole shebang and use your Ryobi fast charger.


In case anybody didn’t know, or still didn’t believe that Ryobi and Ridgid are made in the same factory, I offer a recent find in the recycle bin as proof. On the same day on a trip at 2 different Home Depots I found these 2 - 24V battery packs. One is Ryobi and the other is Ridgid. Except for the registration notch on the Ryobi, they are identical. Inside and out.



It turns out that the Ryobi pack had a bunch of dead cells, the Ridgid has one cell pair that is not “sync’d” with the others. When I took the pack apart one cell pair was sitting at 4.10V while all other cell pairs were exactly the same, all sitting at 3.34V. All the drill packs I have come across and can charge with it’s intended charger, I have found that the chargers do not balance charge. I think this pack was tossed because charging stops when any cell reaches charging cutoff voltage and shuts down when any cell reaches low voltage cutoff. I tested all cells for mAh capacity and they all test at about the same capacity. I should be able to manually balance these cells and hopefully be able to put this pack in service. How that one cell got so out of sync is a mystery to me. If that one cell pair had a greatly reduced capacity, that could explain it. But it doesn’t. When I return home I will know more.

^

Very handy info. Thanks dcho.

Today I pulled one of these out of a HD recycle bin. It appears to be unused and has 4 bars. Probably a display unit. They are used in chain saws, blowers, and power heads. Since the charger for one of these bad boys are $80 and I don't know for sure if the pack is good, I'll be tearing it down.

Hmmm… anything over 48V is considered to be potentially lethal and has all sorts of additional regulatory requirements. I wonder if they meet them all?

Congrats ImA4
That’s the biggest pack yet! Good news is that it is 4Ah, that means 2 parallel 2A cells or maybe some 4Ah 26650’s?
If they are 18650’s you should get maybe 28 2Ah cells.
WOW, what an awesome find

Concerning my post about the Ridgid and Ryobi 24V packs, I went back to the same recycle bin a couple of days later and dug a little deeper. I found a second Ridgid 24V pack that also was lightly used. It was inside an identical plastic bag and was in the same identical condition. One cell sitting at 4.10V and all others at 3.34V
I did manually balance charge them and both work just fine now. I still can’t figure out how 2 packs could end up like that.
A clue to how could be this. Even though all cells test out “good” as new capacity wise, the pack shuts down when any one cell reaches about 3.3V, not the usual 2.75. So instead of having a useful capacity of 2.6Ah, because of the early shutdown, I get about 2.0Ah out of them.
Since then I have found another Ryobi pack that is in excellent condition except for 1 cell pair being dead. As soon as I can figure out how to replace those 2 cells with good ones, I will be able to test at what voltage that pack shuts down at. As I mentioned both the Ridgid 24V and Ryobi packs are identical inside and out.

Probably wouldn't have found them if it wasn't for this thread. Got some other goodies too, but haven't checked them out yet.

So the pack opens so easy and can be put back together with no damage. Seems well build, but don't know if they have the safety measures texaspyro mentioned. 14S2P LG HD4 cells. 2000mAh, 25A continuous.

According to the following site, month of manufacture was December 2014. Only a year and a half old. :)

https://batterybro.com/pages/18650-date-code-lookup-tool

How are you getting away with taking stuff out of the recycle bin at HD?

Are you going in there dressed like a homeless person and when one of the store employee's start questioning you about WTF are you doing in there, you climb out and start yelling at them in spiritual tongues while giggling like a little school girl and frisbeeing Jehovah Witness flyers at them going BOOMBA!!? Then they just kind of back off slowly, then turn around and break into a sprint towards the managers office....lol!?

I’m waiting for the day someone jumps into a recycle bin and meets another BLF member there…… :smiley:

LOL. The bins are inside the store near the entrance to the store. They are about 4 feet tall and about 16” square, but the part that holds the batteries is only about a foot deep. So it doesn’t take many batteries to get full. These days, no one seems to care if you pull anything out of them. I’m usually in business casual clothes, but sometimes in jeans. Doesn’t seem to matter either way.

Well…….then get some and mail them to me yea? :person_facepalming:

If you’re scared of home depot employees don’t do it :stuck_out_tongue: Last time a person acted like “What are you doing ? or ”You can’t do that “…” I just said
” I think a better definition of recycling is to re-purpose or re-use something instead of just bury it in a different section of a land fill .Do you really have a problem with me taking a few battery packs that were headed off to be crushed ?”
The trick is to have a logical argument in hand and make them feel like an idiot if they tell you that you can’t . it’s pretty simple ,these people are making minimum wage and want to be able to control this little section of the planet.Some will always need to be able to tell you no! tell them you have a little experiment and if they are junk then you’ll be sure to bring them right back . :slight_smile:
part of digging in recycling bins for me was to overcome the fear I had about doing it . the women at Lowes were glad to help me bag up the cells i brought in while I dug away for new gold .
IMHO if you’ve not torn down 10 or 15 recycle bin battery packs you’re not really hardcore BLF .

Ask Dchomak what it feels like to pull 3 brand new ryobi 18volt lithium drill packs out of the recycling bin.$$$$

LOL,
I got stopped the other day. As I was pulling what looked like a brand new Milwaukee double pack I heard a voice behind me say “can I help you?” After all the success I’ve had without any hinderence, I was a bit annoyed, and because I was, I didn’t hold back. Besides I was somewhere in PA traveling and I knew I would never be in that store again. So I turned and said

“You know, that question you just asked me is rhetorical. What you’re really asking me is what do you think you are doing rummaging around in our recycle bin, right?” To that he said “Right!”
So I got a little nasty and explained that if “May I help you, doesn’t mean may I HELP you, then it has no meaning. You are insincere when you ask that question. (it’s true, right?)
That’s why I HATE that question when it is rhetorical. :rage:

So knowing that this foray is already blown, I told him the truth. I told him I planned to recycle that pack in the best way possible, use it! Then he said that he can not let me have it, “that’s what I have been told”

Now remember, I wasn’t angry during all this, just annoyed. So I said
“Well then, you’ve been told, and now I’ve been told. I respect that” And I walked away. After I found some penny deals, I went back over to him to apologize for being so direct with him. And he told the real reason they keep an eye on the bin is because of the kids, especially the teenagers. “They use what’s inside to make drugs!” :smiley:
I said oh, it must be the Lithium, right? :smiley:

Anyway, just one of my experiences. I only get stopped maybe 2% of the time.

I just remembered this one.
Sometimes when I go to the recycle bin, I have one to “give” Actually, in my mind, that gives me the “right” to be there. One time I walked in with one in my hand, and held it while I looked for others. There was a lady behind the returns desk that was really nasty and told me to get my hand outta there. I told her I was looking to see if there was something I could use and she told me that they were all no good, that’s why people throw them away. I pressed a little further and she cut to the chase and told me that they belong to HD and I can’t have one.
This time I got mad and told her that if these things are so precious, then YOU can’t have mine (the one I brought in).
And then I really got nasty and told her that she lacks social skills, no wonder they put you over on the returns desk, you’re not good enough with people to run a checkout register! And I walked out, with my original pack. That time I was traveling also, so I knew I would probably never be in that store again.

98% of the time, no one cares.

Oh, and another time I found a Ryobi 18V drill. The planetary gears were messed up, I took it apart and fixed it. Other times I find drills and wait until I find batteries and chargers and donate the sets to charities like The ReStore

NEVER Li-ion drills though, too dangerous.

I get payback though, I found a brand new 18V Ryobi cannister vac for $5 at a ReStore and also an 18V jig saw for $3. And those were the marked prices, it wasn’t because I got special consideration.

i have grabbed packs from those before.only was asked why once by a customer.
even intercepted a bag of versapaks at batteries plus.saw them heading in as i walked up.asked if they were there to drop them for recycling.then told them what i do with them.guy handed them to me and i thanked him,and dropped them in my van.manager was laughing and made a comment that i was poaching his hazardous waste collection.and then found me a few more in his box!
turns out he has a huge versapak tool collection and converted his after i explained how i do it.
i hit a hardware store in indy that had a drum out front.6 or so ryobi/craftsman packs.the stockboy asked what i wanted dead packs for?he thought it was interesting.he said his manager was afraid to walk up to me and ask why.
not only are they a good source of cells they can often be rebuilt better than new if you happen to have tools that use them.

First I ever heard of the ReStore. Nice concept.

I guess if one feels their store might stop them from pulling from the recycle bin, just whip out your phone and act like you are in a conversation. People tend to give room and not stare at someone having a private conversation. While talking, look down into the bin to see if anything interesting is there. If they still stop you say something like, “Wives, always throwing out our perfectly still usable stuff.”, and indicate to the battery. Most people don’t like to get involved in marital situations.