BLF Community Battery Pulls Overview Thread (Laptop packs and Tool Packs)

Dell
Type: J1KND
Rating: 11.1V
Capacity: 48WH
Manufactured 2011.06

6 Red Sanyo cells with Purple tips

All 6 cells had 3.98 volts

UR18650A R1112

EDIT:
Added UR18650A R1112

Do any packs contain a charging system (except Hoover)? It would be handy to just use some of the NOS packs as they are.

I found this pack in the recycle bin. 21.6V (25.2V fully charged) 1500mAh

It’s just 6 cells connected in series with at temperature monitoring sensor. No balancing circuits or low voltage cutoff

The cells tested out close to rated capacity at a 1A draw I should test them at 6A or so.

Dell
Type: J1KND
Rating: 11.1V
Capacity: 48WH
Manufactured 2011.12

6 Red Sanyo cells with White tips

All 6 cells had 3.62 volts

UR18650A R2112

I think it’s safe to say that when it comes to Sanyo cells, we can no longer go by the color around the positive tip to know what mah it is.

I have two Dell packs with the identical model and specs with Sanyo cells with different colored tips.

https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/27671?page=7#comment-791916 Post #215

Dell
Type: J1KND
Rating: 11.1V
Capacity: 48WH
Manufactured 2011.06

6 Red Sanyo cells with Purple tips

All 6 cells had 3.98 volts

UR18650A R1112

I guess I’ll have to just buy a Opus BT-C3100 v2.2 but I’m afraid a week after receiving it, the Opus BT-C3100 v2.5 will be released.

Someone needs to make a charger like the Opus BT-C3100 but in a 8 bay version like the NiteCorn All-80.

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.

Dell
Type: PT434
Rating: 11.1V
Capacity: 56WH
Manufactured 2011.11

6 Red Sanyo cells with Blue tips

All 6 cells had 1.95 volts

UR18650FM R1122

This pack was a new old stock. I put them in my charger and they reached 3 volts in a few seconds and 3.7 volts in less than a minute.

I sure hope these cells aren’t damaged from being self discharged this low.

i bought two of these packs from a laptop dealer 1.5 USD for two battery packs.

one has samsung icr18650-28a .. it said cell made in korea assembled in china

5 samsung cells were 4.06 volts when battery pryed out.. they are in opus discharging now at 1 a .. 4 had 0volts

other pack has orange sanyo r1122 .. it said cell made in japan assembled in china

five sanyo cells are ok and test out to 2200mah at .5 A discharge.as it failed 1a test 4 had 0 volts.(three in parallel . one from a parrallel pack .

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.

Any idea what they are?

I have never seen those in my teardowns, I will see if I can find anything on them

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 #:

ThinkPad Battery 55+ (6 Cell) 42T4797 (LGC)
42T4793 (Panasonic)
42T4791 (Sanyo)
42T4795 (Sony)
ThinkPad Battery 55 (9 Cell) 42T4803 (LGC)
42T4801 (Panasonic)
42T4799 (Sanyo)

cham

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,

I work in IT so I end up with a lot of old tech. Recently, I joined BLF and CPF and learned about Li-Ion battery pulls, which piqued my interest.

I have an old iBook 15 which hasn’t run in quite some time. I pulled the battery and took it apart. This is what I found inside:

The text on the cell says: US18650GR/SET TMLD27R/SONY FUKUSHIMA and I’m fairly certain that there were 8 cells in the pack.

I wired up a temporary battery carrier in a fire retardant box and connected it via leads to a new Nitecore D2 charger and closely monitored each of the batteries as I charged them individually. 4 of them failed to charge. I believe the charger read “error” so I wrapped them individually and placed them in a bin for future disposal.

4 of them charged properly and appear to be working properly. From what I understand, as long as I’m using them as single units (not in series or parallel) basically the biggest risk is when the battery is being charged. I tested them in a Klarus AR10 and they ran fine. I did not attempt to charge them in the AR10.

From what I’ve read in various forums, if an ICR cell is allowed to discharge below a certain level, copper shunts can form in the cell which can cause internal shorts, which in turn can cause a very bad day when the cell is charged. I’m guessing that the laptop battery packs have internal electronics which disable the pack should a cell be deemed bad. Regarding the batteries which did charge, would it be safe to assume that they are shunt free or could they still be at risk?

Mahalo

Major score for me yesterday. Two 5 cell Ryobi packs in working condition, took them apart and cells were balanced. The major score was a like new fully charged 40v Ryobi 20 cell pack. Used 10 cells to rebuild a dead 10 cell Ryobi tool pack scored about 6 months ago that was ratholed. It will be used on my dedicated 1/2” drill with a Bridgeport adapter for raising and lowering the knee.

Congrats! I found one of those very same packs a year and a half ago.
Recently the 40V Ryobi String Trimmer went on clearance, I bet that pack you found went to the display model.

Sounds like you’re right on top of things.

Welcome to the world of Free 18650 Batteries!

Your triage process should safely cull any bad 18650s, and if they pass that & hold a charge for a few days (unused, of course), and deliver ~the nominal capacity, I’d tend to trust them.

Please allow me to politely provide you with a means to RTFM. The inventors of the technology were pretty thorough, IMNERHO. This, combined with your process, should help you answer your own questions.

Dim

Wow! Thanks so much for the warm welcome and the link the the manual. Nice to have access directly to the source, so to speak. Going to take some effort to wrap my brain around it, but the safety portion seems to be quite understandable to the layperson.

I also just scored some (6) NOS 12” iBook battery packs. Haven’t cracked any open yet, so no news on what’s inside, however I did place one in an iBook and it took the charge fine, reporting full charge and ran the iBook for a few hours on full power mode, so I’m pretty optimistic. Based on form factor and output voltage, it should have 6 18650s per pack. Now I just need to decide what to do with them. :slight_smile:

Thanks again, Dim. A pleasure to be here and thanks to everyone who’ve contributed to this valuable community resource.

Mahalo

I finally got around to disassembling the NOS 12” iBook pack my previous post. BTW, I see a lot of people using dremel tools, etc… to break into these cases. I haven’t read through the whole thread to see if anyone else is using the method I use, but for the most part, I’m able to get into these packs with my bare hands and just a few hand tools in the end (leatherman and diagonal pliers), applying very minimal forces on the packs.

Table Data and pics before disassembly:

Apple, M9337G/A, mAh not listed but calculated as 5100 mAh (2x2550)@10.8 v (3x3.6), SF (Sony Fukushima?) US18650GR, 2550Mah

Based on the output voltage (10.8v) I’m expecting 3 cells (3 x 3.6v). Based on the dimensions of the pack, I’m expecting 6 18650s, so 3 pairs (3x3.6v), each pair welded in parallel (2x2550mAh). Volts and Amps multiplied gives us wattage (Power), so total power output in the range of 18.4 watts (18.36 rounded up).

Disassembly:

Most of the battery packs (HP/Apple/Dell/Asus/Acer/Toshiba) that I’ve examined to date are built in this fashion: Basically the main frame is a skeletonized plastic clamshell with a large window (ribbed or not) which is sealed by a thin, stick-on plastic or metallic plate. In the picture below, if you look at the upper right corner of the cell, you can see where I’ve folded back the corner of the plate, revealing the green battery inside the pack. Funny coincidence, in the youtube video by Ol-Lumen in the OP, he disassembles what looks to be an Acer Netbook battery which does NOT have the plate I spoke of.

Peeling back the plastic plate completely reveals:

Using my fingers, I was able to pry open one side of the ribs, tear it free, then work the remaining ribs off, revealing the batteries below:

Flipping the pack over, by flexing the pack slightly, I was able to remove the cover on the bottom of the pack:

With the inner ribs removed, I then pried off one of the long side retainers, which then allowed me to carefully extract the two pairs of inner cells.

I used the diagonal pliers to trim the leads to avoid shorts and then removed the last 2 cells. I used the needle nose of my leatherman to remove as much of the welded battery tabs as possible. I then used a sanding drum on my cordless drill to remove the remnants (because I couldn’t find my dremel). In this battery pack, Apple uses a silicone based compound as an adhesive, which made clean up a breeze. A little spit and elbow grease and we have the finished product:

Note that the battery pairs are welded in parallel, positive to positive, negative to negative. This doubles the current capacity, basically turning two 3.7 v x 2550 mAh cells into effectively a 3.7 v x 5100 mAh cell. 3 of these paired cells are then wired in series (positive to negative) which then triples (3 cells) the pack voltage (Apple uses 3.6 volts in their calculation, apparently, so 3 x 3.6) to 10.8 v.

Imprinting on the cells:
SF US18650GR
T G7141OI12I

Based on the 20th post in this link, I’m assuming these are 2400 mAh batteries, build date 2006, September 12.
Charged the individual cells via leads connected to my Opus charger, then ran a capacity test which yielded the following mAh/internal resistance results:

2544/103 2535/97 2501/116 2569/98 2549/96 2507/90, with all batteries charging up to between 4.17-4.19 volts, so I’m pretty happy with the results.

BTW, I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now so still very wet behind the ears. Initially, I was recording data directly onto the batteries, however I was noticin a couple of issues. It was difficult to write on the round batteries. I could only record limited data. The permanent marker I was using was rubbing off easily.

To address these issues, I created a google sheet into which I recorded what I considered to be pertinent information. I wiped down each battery with rubbing alcohol to remove any possible grease, and then I assigned a 2 digit hexadecimal code for each battery which I wrote on each battery using metallic permanent marker. I then covered the marking with a piece of clear tape. You’d be surprised how long that will protect such markings.

Anyway, I made a copy of my spreadsheet and it’s available to the public for comment here. I would appreciate any comments or feedback. Also, if anyone else finds it is useful, by all means, feel free to make a copy for yourself and distribute it freely.

For now, the batteries go into a holding plastic container, placed in a firesafe. In 5 days time, I’ll check the voltages against my data table to compare losses.

Mahalo

Latest project, my dead Ryobi One 18v Li-Ion battery pack.

This pack yielded 10 Sanyo UR18650SA L38A, which apparently is an IMR cell w/ 1300 mAh capacity

I haven’t had the opportunity to check the cells yet.

Mahalo