I took the advice and found someone that knows an IT guy. First pack was an old dell battery with six Samsung ICR18650-26FU… NICE… All were above 2.2V so I am checking them on the D4 now…
Sincerely appreciate the help, now I have to build an IT guy a flashlight to keep the packs coming…
so if you are in a battery junk yard use this way to find capacity of individual cell without having to google it.
to get a maximum mah rating battery look for a battery bank that has highest wh ratings.
an individual cell having WH rating above 9.5 means it at least is 2500mAH.
i hope somone good at andorid programing would code a little utility for this purpose ... dang i never worked with visual programing. all were console based.
Making new Friends and building new Flashlights is the “Intangible Benefit” of recycling laptop packs. That’s what I think, anyway. Be sure to remind him/her to get a good charger…
The real trick is New, Oem , Unused Packs w/ japanese or korean cells inside .
Use packs are really hit or miss . they are fun to play with but the yield will generally be about 20% ~30% of cells worth keeping.
once you go new unused packs you'll never go back ...ok every once in a while that recycling box will call your name . But at least then when the manger asks you "what the hell do you think you're doing ?"
You can look him in the eye and just say ....." It was talkin to me "
The white tops are 2,000mAh if I’m not mistaken. At least that is what they would be new, probably less than that now. Maybe 1800 or so. Purple tops are higher mAh than the white tops and from what I have read are also supposed to be higher amps as well. Probably not the super high amp “purple tops” though. They do make a purple top 20amp battery but it also has a very different top altogether. It has a larger top with only four or five legs. It’s a newer cell and I wouldn’t expect to find it in older laptop batteries.
The purple tops that you found are good batteries and I would keep them, the white ones I might keep depending on how they tested. But with either of them you should fully charge them and then go back and check them again a day later. If they don’t stay at least mostly charged after a day then they are pretty beat up already. In fact cells that are really beat up will drop a bunch of volts overnight. If they do that then recycle them for sure.
A friend tore apart a netbook battery pack and discarded the remains without writing down the pack info. He sent me this picture of the cells, but they look like Chinese Samsung wannabes.
Pulled apart a thinkpad battery pack 42t4801 and it came with 9 panasonic 2900mAh 18650s. According to thinkpad forums, this is what will come according to the model #:
I opened up a power bank I bought from the retail chain “Five BeLow” All items in the store cost either $1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or $5. Nothing higher. This was a so called 6600mAh power bank. It contained 3 18650 cells in parallel and to have been 6600 mAh each cell should have had to have been 2200mAh each. Or least they should have had a wrapper that said as much. Of course I didn’t actually believe this power bank to test that high, it only cost $5. Here is a pic of the guts.
It would appear that the cells are “called” 1800 mAh cells? I tested them on my OPUS 3100 and they test out at 1650mAh. Surely not 2200, but not THAT bad either. This power bank will put out a sustained 1000mA at 5V. Once the pack shuts down it will not recover on its’ own and output a little more before charging. Only after hitting it with a charge does it turn back on. For $5 I was happy with it. My 3 cell ENB will NOT output as much as this and the vacant box without any cells cost twice the price. Once things hit mainstream retail, and powerbanks are on their way, the value is hard to beat.
Does anybody recognize these cells?
Also, here is a shot of the charge-discharge board,