i manage to salvage 6 x18650 from laptop battery (found it at garbage bin near my house) only 5 of them survive 
Just got my hands on the multimeter, and it was good timing because both LEDs had turned to a solid green after what must have been by now over 10 hours combined charging.
Measured the voltages of the two charged cells, both were as close to anything that matters to 4.2v
Also measured the cells that hadn’t been charged, all of them read exactly 0.88v, very low i’m guessing, hopefully able to revive them.
I’ve popped another two cells in the charger so i suppose its time to wait another 10 hours for them.
I’ll continue to measure the voltages of the charged ones though to make sure they’re holding the charge, here’s hoping that they do!
DO NOT CHARGE USED CELLS THAT ARE OF THAT LOW OF A VOLTAGE!!! Irreversible damage has already been done to them! (I'll let others speak as to what exactly.) Generally irreversible damage is caused when a cell is discharged below about 2.5v or so. New cells aren't that expensive and it's not worth risking an explosion / poisonous venting of gas over.
-Garry
I'm a gambler, so I'd charge those cells even if they were used, but either outdoors or in an ammo can. They're probably not very healthy though.
Was that laptop battery pack new (old, but unused) or used? If it was new, then the cells are probably okay.
Heh, well damn.
The cells that were charged and seemed to be fine are just that, they seem fine. Nothing abnormal during charging (apart from the long time it took), no overheating etc.
I’ve got another pair in it right now, and they’re doing just fine or so it seems.
The charged ones have been keeping their charge for a short while now, not budged a little. Can’t really say anything from that though it’s not been long enough i suppose. Will keep checking them in the coming days.
As for the battery pack that i took then out of, i bought it on ebay listed as new, it seemed to be an official dell one, and looked cosmetically new. Just didn’t want to work. Figured it wasn’t worth the hassle of returning it so i just cracked it open in curiosity and found these 9 beauties in there.
It’s been said previously in this thread that brand new cells can have a much lower starting voltage before being initially charged, could these cells just be brand new ones and the battery unit never worked to begin with due to a faulty management board or something along those lines?
I’ll continue charging them as i have been, don’t see that i’m in any immediate danger. Will do the whole thing outside if it starts heating up but that’s about it
I assumed based on statements in the OP that the pack was used and had gone defunct.
EDIT (cross-posted): Now that changes things slightly. Brand new never charged cells have been reported (i.e. I can't say myself) to be ok from around 1.5v up. I did receive a brand new never used pack that came with cells at 1.6v to 1.7v which seem to charge up ok and maintain voltage. The advice given to me (post #53) was:
-Garry
Pretty cool. I’ve salvageda couple packs of pink ones before and charged them from below the 2v mark, but they never had much juice to them and went dead super fast so tossed them rather than risk them blowing. The green and red cells from the Dell packs have been better for me.
Oh, NOW it’s on!!! :bigsmile:
But wait… There’s more…
To try to start an answer to your question, as for me, they’re all “too big” to some degree.
It’s just that I need to carry a really good flashlight, but lumpy belt-cancer just snags on everything, so it has to go in some pocket. Before I crossed paths with this BLF bunch, “small enough” was always “too dim” and “bright enough” was always “too big”.
And I’m cheap budget, so for me, with all its well-documented faults, the Ultrafire 501b turned out to be the best place to start. It takes P60 drop-ins, so you can easily experiment with emitters etc. until you get that perfect beam, all for budget money. LOTS of budget money!!
But 501b’s can be had for under $10.00, so I’m casting my vote that-a-way.
OTOH, if you don’t mind the bulk, any of the C8 clones work wonderfully well for “budget” money as well.
Anybody else?
on high voltage stuff…it’s quite easy to blow a cheap multimeter up
For what we do…the harbor freight and el-cheapies are fine…just don’t go sticking the probes in the mains sockets and you should be ok 
I really like this guys youtube channel…he is like the “Steve Irwin” of electronics
It’s easy enough to blow a damned-expensive Fluke too! (fortunately, my boss back then drove slowly, and I was very highly motivated, and DMMs aren’t hard to fix!!)
Lock Out, Tag Out, and TRY Out!!
Ah great, thanks for clarifying. I’ve borrowed a friends old scuffed up meter for this. Figured its time to get one of my own though, got a Vichy vc99. Seemed a bargain for the price and there are a fair few decent reviews out there.
Hmm cheers for the recommendation, Dimbo, I’ll have a look into the 501b ultrafire (on another note, I absolutely love how everything I’m coming across in this type market has to have “fire” in the name!)
I have a hike coming up soon and am looking for a pretty substantial, bright flashlight for it. Have been leaning towards a trustfire tr-3t6, the one with the extended tube. Can get a pretty sweet deal on one. How would you rate those?
Back to the cells - The pair that have been charged for over a day now haven’t lost any volts, and the meter I’m using goes down to 0.01accuracy, so it seems I have some winners! Just a matter of charging the rest up and getting something to actually use the buggers with now
Want a good chuckle
Ohboy, that sure is … Something
Also I don’t think you’ll want to use those scavenged cells in a multicell light without slapping a protection circuit on them. Without a known capacity It’s not likely that they’ll discharge at the same rate which can put more load on one battery than one of the others causing it to over drain quickly.
Ah no, really?
I can understand where that’s coming from, but hope that it doesn’t apply to me as that’s just what i wanted to do with them. The markings on them are all the same (LGABD11865), so i can only presume they’re of the same mAh, listed as 3000 on what i’ve found.
I’m unsure if they have protection circuits, how do i find this out? None of the websites say either way.
The battery charge circuitry was the protection circuit…they do not have protection on them…I wouldn’t push them over 2-3C which means 3000mA x 2
They look like these at all?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-X-LG-LGABD11865-18650-3-7V-3000mAh-Unprotected-Rechargeable-Li-ion-Battery-/111280023801
By the above…4-5A max output…so don’t push em too hard
Ding ding ding!
Yeah, those are the cells.
Ah ok, i didn’t realize that. I thought that some cells had protection inside the actual casing, a little circular circuit.
So by what that says i can run up to 2 of the cells in series for a torch? Would using 3 be unsafe then?
Cheers for all this everyone, still trying to learn what i can about this area
Unprotected cells in series can be quite dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Parallel is much safer.
Also, I see those cells have a max charge of 4.35v. You'll be fine only charging them to 4.20, you'll just lose some of the capacity.
A protected cell will have a strip leading down from the positive contact down to the bottom negative contact where the protection PCB is. It will be under wrapping, but generally visible. This Ebay listing shows good pics of a protection circuit with the strip (Pics with another layer of wrapper removed):
+Ww~~60_57.JPG)
-Garry