First battery pull

I work in a hospital, so I stopped by plant ops and talked to the director. Asked where we recycle batteries, he walked me over to the electricial room and showed me. Said take em all if ya want. So I did.

I can break them down no problem, my issue is testing. I have a Klein MM300 multimeter.
But that’s all I own for testing supplies. What would be a budget friendly tester to check the capacity of these cells I pull? I know how to check the voltage but is there anything I need to be on the look out for?

Thanks in advance. I’ll post results. Also the laptop packs are all HP and Dell.
!!

Man I’m so jealous all those free batteries a good bit are still usable. I’d suggest getting a anazlying charger like the liito or opus so you can run a discharge test on the cells

Around me recycling isn’t so big, I may end up posting a Craigslist ad or something and see what’s comes of it. The hardware stores here keep the bins behind the counter. And best buy is like 30 miles away and only over that way once a month and have to miss work so in a rush to get back on the clock

Seems like I can get these routinely. Our electrician has to wrap every battery and box them all up, the box also has a weight limit. So he has to keep the box on a scale then add and remove batteries to get the weight right. They have someone pick them up for recycling. My point is the electrician will gladly save every damn one of em for me lol

That’s a awesome thing you have going, you could easily get hundreds of decent cells for lights I run laptop pulls up to 5 amps. Only a couple things I have that pull harder and get high drain cells. I just won a eBay auction for a new pack for $7 someone ended up selling the laptop they bought it for still in the original plastic. But nothing like what you got going. You could probably sell decent cells on here for like $1 a piece

Pick up a LiitoKala Li500 charger/tester. They’re only $15 without an adapter if you have your own.

https://ru.aliexpress.com/store/product/2015-Liitokala-Lii-500-NiMH-Battery-Charger-3-7V-18650-18350-18500-17500-10440-26650-1/133859_32562854812.html?spm=2114.10010108.1000023.1.Fkcv3W

Ok so after a few hours and a few band aids later. Here is what came out of those packs. Some were older C batteries ran in a series so I will re-recycle those. I checked a bunch of the 18650s they were averaging from 2.8v up to 4.0v so I presume I can salvage the majority of these. Bunch of LG’s and Samsungs, panasonics, as well as some I don’t recognize but in sure y’all do. Anyways I’ll have to get a tester and check them
All! I’m sure that will take some time!

Those laptop batteries were the easiest and had the LG/Samsungs. All of those brands read the highest on the MM (3.2-4.0) avg!

!!

Thats crazy amount of batteries, you have a HUGE luck if all of those are 2,8V+……

Buy 2 lii-500 and make sure to run 3 tests after to determine their capacity, I had some tests and the capacity decreased after the first run :confounded:

man, you’re gonna have lot of battery collections if you keep doing this. time to prepare the storage, haha

I’m not sure if they are all 2.8+ v I defiantly didn’t check them all. It’s s little more work than I intcapated, I still have to finish cleaning them up. Going to test voltage on all today. What’s the recommended cut off? If they are discharged below 2v toss em?

One good thing about getting them from a hospital is, the hospital is required to change a lot of these batteries out every (insert manufactures reccomended time frame) so some on the battery packs had battery indicator lights on them. When I pressed the test button they read 100%. They HAVE to throw out perfectly good batteries.

The recommend discharge is 3,6V, but they can be drained to 2.5V….

The best way is lii-500, there you will comprove the capacity in nor test and will know if worth to use or not, and the really matters if you are use then in series, select the “capacity matches” for do not over discharge one.

As Monty Python would put it: You lucky bastard ! :smiley:

I see 3 green ones resembling Sony.
Might be high drain cells.

For storage it’s best to charge them up to approximately 3.6 Volts.

Given the number of cells that you already have and the clear opportunity for a continuous stream of ‘new’ ones, you can afford to be pretty picky about which ones to keep. I set my pass/fail at 3vDC, if they are below that when they come out of the pack, they get recycled. Now that I have my Lii-500 analyzing charger, I ran them through a NORmal test to see what the capacity is. I recycle anything that tests at less that 1000 mAH. HKJ is not confident in the IR test of the Lii-500 so my next job is to make a tester to get an accurate number for that.

I created a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of all my batteries. When I pull them out of a pack, I sharpie marker a ‘serial’ number on them. In fact, when I buy new cells I do the same, Lap Top pulls get marked LTxxByy, purchased batteries get initials of the supplier. BGyy - BangGood, GByy -GearBest, MTNyy and so on.

Charging them to a storage voltage rather than full up may be best practice, I have mine at full capacity since I don’t want to have to add -“Charge all my batteries” to the list of stuff to do before Hurricane Mathew (or whatever) takes a swipe at us.

Well before you get too carried away……read a few laptop pull threads here on blf …use the search feature … Some advice here would have saved you a few scars … i also suggest NOT cleaning up all the cells …certainly not before basic testing ….i woulpdnt suggest a discharge test either just check their internal resistances and charge up tyhe best of the best of each pack ….Cleaning the ends up on cells you trash makes you feel really dumb . just get themripped apart and clean enough to get them safely in a charger .

FUN STUFF …I really get a kick out of laptop pulls it’s like crazy christmas …

Anything that doesn’t say lithium ion on the pack you don’t want …those big C size cells are lots of times Ni-cad and cadnium is nasty nasty and absolutely needs recycled . I probably wouldn’t have picked up lead acid / gel cell stuff either ….WHY ?

looks like you have some great cells ….i have lots of those lt blue /purple samsungs from some new unused oem packs … they can be charged up to 4,3 ? 4,35 V ? if you have the right charger . they are nice cells to gift to friends who have never used lithium ion before since immediately they can never over charge them with most regular chargers . :stuck_out_tongue:

You may want to double-check the chemistry on those cells before you throw them in the charger. I saw a Dewalt pack in your first photo. I had torn down a Dewalt lithium pack and found the cells were the 3.2V nom./3.6V full-charge LiFePO4 chemistry:

In lieu of a chrgaer that tests cells you can just charge them up /record voltage fresh off the charger and them look at the voltage every couple days or so for a few weeks …bad cells show their true colors pretty quickly and with a large pool of batteries you’ll be able to see good from bad ….OTTOH these chargers these days are exceptional // do multiple chemistry charging and lots of testing all for cheap …what a deal :slight_smile:

Those dark green cells that appear to be slightly slimmer and longer may be Ni-MH (Hard to tell in picture). If they are they should be high drain 4Ah cells. They will measure 17mm x 67mm. They will also be LSD if they are what they appear to be.

Hey thanks guys for all the input and suggestions, keep em coming. Consider me an infant on this subject matter. I have just recently started dabbling in the LED scene. It started asking about flounder lights. I’ve placed 3 orders through fast tech and as you can imagine I haven’t gotten anything in yet. I’ve bought a soldering iron, solder, and a bunch of various electrical tools. I’m going to build the flounder lights first, then onto flashlight mods! I love flashlights, just never thought of building them. I love free swag even more so I’ll continue to get free cells, just can’t help myself.

I could’ve have been more careful ripping the packs and will from now on, I tore the wrappers on quite a few and will have to re wrap them once I test them.

As far as cleaning the cells, I caught myself cleaning them as I was ripping the packs apart and about half way through stopped my self and figured I’d test them all first.

I am only keeping the 18650s those lead batteries are all in good working condition, so I can and will use those. I currently use them for flounder lights and so does a bunch of my fishing buddies. They will get used for sure.

Do any retail stores in the US sell those battery charger/testers? Ordering online is not a problem it just takes a while to ship.

I agree with being picky about what cells to keep. If I can get a steady stream of cells I’ll surely get picky. Right now I don’t know what good cells are so I’m not picky!

Thanks again!! You guys have created a monster! Lol

as stated earlier many of these are going to be in good shape due to it beirn time to do a scheduled replacement.
i would keep the c nicads/nimh too.
good for c maglight hotwire mods.
lucky find.
i got some 6 month old medical packs with sanyo 10h d nimh recently.exceeded shelf life.my friend will get every battery they need rid of now.
he is into solar like me so with my testing gear we will both win.