I recently raided my IT department of their recycled laptop batteries. I have roughly 40 packs, 240 batteries. I don't think I need all of them.
Of the first 36 batteries (6 packs) I harvested only 1 was under 3.79v. It looks like the circuit failed rather than the cells. This makes sense as we get new laptops every other year so the batteries can't be more than 2 years old.
They are all rated at 2600mAh, not tested.
LG BD318650
Samsung ICR18650-26F
Sony US18650GR 8A
So any of you local to me want some let me know. I'll leave some unopened so you can have fun opening them up.
(Update 2013-04-10):
All batteries pulled, charged, discharged. Summary and numbers in below posts #7
hell of a deal. thank you. though it would be cheaper for me to buy some top of the line cells than go pick some up
sure some canadians will be happy though
Well if nobody local comes and picks them up please put me at the top of your list for shipping. I will be glad to pay for shipping. I have been wanting to try some pulls but I don’t have a Home Depot or anything like that in my home town.
Good luck with your give away it’s a very cool thing to do.
Shipping is expensive from Canada. It may not be worth it.
I'm discharging them one at a time and will save the best ones for you if you still want them. I'll keep you posted. I'm throwing out anything under 1500mAh and re-evaluate the cut list.
I'm done with laptop pulls for good. After breaking open 40 battery packs and couple pricks to the finger, laptop pulls are no longer fun for me. Try lugging home from work > 40lbs of batteries home on the crowded subway. IMO, it's a waste of time. I'm not trying to discourage others but this recent adventure definitely ruined it for me.
Of the 240 batteries (18 Samsung ICR18650-26F; 36 LG BD318650; & 186 Sony US18650GR 8A), I decided to keep only 4. That's 1.7% of the pool. Only 18 batteries had capacities over 1000mAh. The 4 I kept have capacities just shy of 2000mAh.
Here's my time consuming set up.
After pulling batteries, I had 2 Nitecore i4 chargers and 1 WP2 II charger charging 10 batteries at any given time. After leaving them overnight I would check to see if they held the 4.2v charge. They did. Then they were discharged on my hobby charger at 1A. Luckily most batteries would only take a few minutes before they popped. They all held a charge but the internal resistence were too high. Most of the batteries quickly pulled itself down from 4.2v to 3.35v range under the 1A load. Its interesting to see none of the 186 Sony batteries had over 1000mAh. They were all rated at 2800mAh to begin with. (edit: 2600mAh, not 2800)
@18sixfifty - if you still want them let me know. Like I said before, the cost of me shipping them to you would probably be more than buying 4 Trustfire flames 3000mAh batteries from Fasttech. I put new wrappings on them though. They are 2 LGs and 2 Samsungs.
That is one heck of a lot of work… in gathering, teardown and testing. Thanks for posting your results. I guess it confirms why old packs were retired in the first place.
Wow sorry to hear about all that work. Thanks for the offer of the free cells but I’ll let you keep them after all that work. Plus I have a bunch coming in.
Believe me, I sympathize with you…first hand! I’m going through the same thing, albeit not with anything near the # of batteries you dealt with… It is SOOO time-consuming with high probability of failure :(…
One of the guys in the IT department at work dropped off a box at my desk while I was at lunch with a note on it. The note read, "Enjoy!". Inside the box was 18 more laptop batteries. I guess they figured since I took the last 40, that I would take these too.
Now I'm contemplating if I should break my April 2013 revelation of not doing any more laptop pulls.
The shipping cost for shipping a mini-mag to florida cost $10 by air. I think it was only marginally cheaper by surface mail. God knows how much it would be for these things. They're heavy.
If you happen to drop by in my neck of the woods (Vancouver), they are yours.
Yeah, there is a limit on how much I'd be willing to pay for shipping. Of course if I did this, I'd finally have to get a hobby charger and do some tests too. Let me look into this..... Okay, I'm coming up with nearly $100. You're right, that's not worth it. Hopefully some other lucky BLF'r can take you up on your offer.
