Sharing: New genuine Toshiba laptop battery pack on Ebay - 12 cells - $16.99 (incl shipping)

Batteries and Chargers Rechargeable Batteries
1

Hi,

I found this on Ebay for $6.99 + 10.00 shipping:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200961565534?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&\_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

The description says:

and:

so I’m guessing 12 x 2150 mAh 18650 batteries?

I just bought one of them, so I don’t have it in hand, so I can’t vouch for any of that, but the seller has 99.9% positive feedback, so I’m assuming it is new, and that it is genuine Toshiba (not a 3rd party), and that it has 12 cells.

I think the seller’s real website is this:

http://www.getpartsonline.com/pa3335u-1brs-n.html

I’m hoping that they’re 12 Japanese (like Panasonic or Sony) cells.

Anyway, I thought some of you all here might be interested.

EDIT: Added “mAh” above

2

Crap… If I hadn’t already used my monthly light budget I’d grab one. I could always use some batteries.

3

I was trying to figure out what a 2150 battery was until I worked out it must mean 12X18650 2150mAh batteries.

Unfortunately that is a US based seller, so shipping to Canada would be $40.00, making the total cost more than buying brand new 2200mAh GP 18650 cells.

4

Sorry about that. I’ve edited the OP to add “mAh”.

5

More pics later - have to go somewhere…

6

Wow, that looks like a really easy crack. I’m just not sure that 2200mAh cells are the best solution unless the Acer Aspire 5600mAh packs dry-up. Kind of like how it seems dumb for the BHP to only have 13 round-mags in 2013, 2200mAh 18650s seem…obsolete. Unless they’re LiFePO4 and can give a Trustfire X6 a solid honest hour on high.

I can’t deny though, for 12 Korean/Japanese 18650s, $17 sounds good.

7

I think that seller reduces shipping for more than 1, so it’d be cheaper than that per pack in that case.

BTW, in case anyone is wondering, I’m not associated with the seller, just passing along a good (maybe decent) deal.

8

So…what’s the ID on these cells? Maybe Sanyo 2200’s?

Mind sharing your cracking technique? You made it look eeeeeasy…. :wink:

9

The only printing that I can find is on the red wrapper, it says (I think), “hg5fjt”.

Here’re some more pics I took.

This shows the pack and the tools I use (a knife and a flat-headed screwdriver):

Basically, I run the tip of the knife in the joints, to widen them a little and to cut into them a little. Then, I use the screwdriver and shove it into the joint, trying to find where I can twist the screwdriver and crack the case open. In the case of this pack, the corners on the side that had the connector came apart first, and I kept opening the joint from there.

Once I get the gap open along the 2 sides and the side on the connector side, I just grabbed both sides of the pack and pulled it apart, really hard, and ended up with what’s in the 2nd pic in the earlier post.

I saw that there were 2 sets of 6 batteries per that pic, so I bent the pack (it was soft plastic) in the middle, and one of the sets of 6 batteries kind of popped out:

The 2nd set of 6 batteries was glued tight, but I eventually got it out:

I actually used a pair of scissors (not shown) to cut the sets of 3 batteries apart.

Then, I used the “sardine can” method (using a pair of needle nose to twist the soldered tabs off). In this pic, you can see one of the tabs kind of half way off:

After removing all the tabs, I used the needlenose to “tap” the ends to flatten the pointy pieces.

Since this was new pack, as expected, all the batteries came out with voltage ~1.29V. The i4 and TF 4-bay chargers I have won’t charge the batteries because of the low voltage, so I put them into an el-cheapo charger I have, that apparently doesn’t check for low voltage, for a few minutes:

After a few minutes, the batteries come out as 3V+, so then I put them into one of my 4-bay chargers to charge fully.

Once they’re all charged, I’ll do a discharge test with my Accucel on a couple of them.

EDIT: I forgot to mention: Per the 1st pic, this came nicely packaged, in a foam-padded cardboard box, and what looks like the original anti-static bag. Also the seller shipped via UPS (not USPS), so that kind of explains most of the $10 shipping cost. As I mentioned to another member on PM, I think that he/she/they are basically giving these packs away for the cost of shipping IMO.

10

Since this was new pack, as expected, all the batteries came out with voltage ~1.29V.


So do I need to do some more reading up on laptop pack pulls? Is there something special about these cells or packs that makes them different from regular Li-Ion cells?.

My understanding was that this voltage is so low as to cause copper shunts inside making the cell potentially very unsafe - a decent charger probably rejected them for good reason.

Budget I'm happy to be - dangerous I'm not.

No disrespect intended ohaya but aren't you taking quite a risk charging/using these?

11

The same discussion happened awhile ago, when I posted about some new Fujitsu pack. I don’t remember all the details, but you can try to look for that. Someone else said the same thing, that really “new” packs would have batteries with low voltages, and I think that I did find some website that said the same thing, but I don’t remember if it was posted on that earlier thread.

On the earlier Fujitsu pack, I was about to dump all of the gray CGR18650s until I found that info and someone posted confirming about the low voltages, so I kept all of them and charged them as I mentioned above (put them in a charger that doesn’t check for low voltage for a few minutes, then fully charge them in a normal charger), and they all work fine as of today.

If I bought a used pack, and it came out with all batteries with low-voltage, I’d be dumping them like everyone recommends, but at least personally and from my experience, new packs, if you can get some assurance that they are really new, are different.

Not recommending anything, but check the info out for yourself and decide.

EDIT: Here’s a link to one of the posts from that older thread about the Fujitsu pack:

12

Correction to post #8. The markings on the battery that I’ve found are:

HG5FJT5

and under that:

095335

There’s also “H30A” that’s impressed (not printed) perpindicular to the above.

I can’t find any markings other than those.

13


Thanks ohaya, very interesting reading that seems to raise more questions than it answers. Anecdotally it seems the cells in that thread have been fine under a variety of tests.

It's great to see you posting so much useful information on this topic.

The key would seem to be NEW, NEVER USED packs if such a thing can be guaranteed. At the right price and with the current shipping and postage issues, laptop pack salvage may become a much more attractive proposition for many of us.

14

At least from what I can tell (cosmetically and electrically), the ones in the OP are really new. I took the risk of getting one, and am reporting what I found, to try to mitigate (but not totally eliminate) the risk in case anyone else is interested.

I’m still charging the batteries, and will:

  • Measure voltages off of the chargers, and report something like an average, and if any are significantly different from 4.20 +/- 0.05V (FYI, my i4 and TF 4-bay chargers seem to tend to terminate over 4.20V in general)
  • Report if any of them lose significant voltage over some undetermined period of time
  • Run some discharge tests on random fully-charged batteries, and report my results

This is what I’ve done with other packs that I got that I found and that would be “generally available” after my initial purchase, but that’s about the best that I can do.

The rest is out of my hands :)…

15

This post has made me curious. What is the highest mAh for 18650 cells anyone has reported finding while harvesting, anyone remember some figures around 2600 or above?

16

texaspro got 2600 mAh from the earlier gray ones from a Fujitsu pack:

I haven’t gone through the entire thread again, but I seem to recall that someone, maybe comfy, got ~2900 mAh, but check that thread in the link.

Just to set expectations, I don’t expect that for these batteries in this thread/OP.

17

hmm… that batteries is seem similar to 2000 mAh sanyos that i got from bgmicro.com for $2 each

18

Ubehebe gets 2800mAh Samsungs all the time. I’ve got a 6-pack heading this way myself! :wink:

19

The OP of this thread found Panasonic 2900mah 18650’s in the thread below.

20

Thanks for the updates everyone. If harvesting is going to become more popular, makes me wonder if it would be worth it to renew and get behind the spreadsheet that Aftrburnr floated in August?