Large number of laptop batteries

Huntington, WV. If you need some let me know. I have more than I can ever use. By several factors.

It's a lot of work for very little money. Unless you're doing it as a kindness to the forum, sell the unopened packs for whatever you can get on ebay.

Used laptop packs are most times not worth it. Sorting through them to find the completely dead cells, the ones with 30% capacity remaining, and the 'good' ones with 60%... not worth it. Laptops are incredibly unkind to their batteries. Old but unused laptop packs are a different story.

Toss all batteries that measure under 3v (3.2 to be safe)
If you can, try to check what year are the laptops that run these batteries made in. Anything over 6 years could be tossed.
If you have a charger that can measure capacity (ex:imaxB6 for 20$ on ebay) you can test the capacity of the battery by discharging it after you fully charge them.
I think you should wait until someone wants these batteries, then take them apart. You can give them an option of having solder tabs or not.

By the way, you can use the battery packs as actual battery packs. They come with a built in protection board and thermal resistors. Just solder your plug to the + and -

!!! !

Ok Red I have opened 2 packs, 18 total batteries. None have been lower than 4.02v
Dark green, 1 pack, 6 batteries. Range from 3.03-3.43v
Neon green, 1 pack, 6 batteries. 2.4-2.9v

Hope I did that picture right.

That neon green one is an IMR. Are you sure that didn’t come from a drill pack?

Neon green is samsung 2200mah. Dark green is sony 2400mah. Red is sanyo 2600mah.

Red are the only decent ones with enough potential capacity to justify extracting and testing imo.

Laptop. Charging them now to see how they hold a charge.

Just showing off.

To are cells above 2.7v (my personal cut off). Bottom row is cells above 3.8v.

Blue ones are samsung 15M’s (IMR)! Still have a couple more packs from today. I really like the 15M’s I had about 15-20 already.

!!

These seem to be the most promising. Have 8 packs unopened. These seem to be the best. Opened two packs and they were all above 4v.

!!

These are the next best all rated above 3v. Have 6 packs.

These I have an absolute ton of them about 26 packs. The one I opened they were low all under 3v.

Would it be worth it to make a few bucks and sell the excess or just go ahead and make that battery to end all batteries.

There's more to it than that. With age they build up internal resistance, you need to do discharge tests on all of them and compare the capacity at low current with capacity at high current (usually 1 amp is good enough). The ones with a large spread between low & high current are junk, regardless of their resting voltage or how well they maintain voltage after charging.

Why do you have to compare high and low current discharge opposed to just testing high current discharge?

The thought of testing that many batteries make me giggle…. So what would be the best method to do that?

Please see post #8, I would just end up retyping the same thing over again.

So not really worth it :slight_smile:

It's an awful lot of work to end up with 2 out of every 10 usable only in a low-drain application. And a lot of scrap to haul off to the recycling center. Used laptop packs don't get replaced for no reason.

New, never-charged, never-used packs that have been in storage, just overstock stuff that was taking up space in a warehouse somewhere, for a laptop model that's now obsolete, that somebody bought in bulk at auction and is unloading for cheap on ebay can be excellent value. Used up clapped out laptop packs are almost always not.

These were from a laptop upgrade for a large group. Some of the batteries are new some are old. But I am the kind of person that hates to see things go to waste. Thus as a hobby endless hours to throw at a project. I know you are trying to save me from a lot of useless work but if I wanted that I don’t think I should be on a flashlight modding forum.

Order 5 chargers that can run charge and discharge tests and just run them while I work? Maybe 10 chargers lol. Other than that I might just pull what I could use in the next couple years and toss the rest. Those are the options. If I toss them I would love to see them go out to people that would like them to tinker with also. So any help you could give would be great, other than “Run away as fast as you can and save your sanity!”

I understand your standpoint but at work I deal with bones and bugs so playing with electronics is just a sort of an escape so the work while tedious would be a welcome relief.

Well hey man I live in Richmond Virginia and have a Honda civic

Just saying :slight_smile:

Let me see how these tests pan out. But I will certainly have more than I can use. So shoot me a pm and we can work something out.