Have Ikelite DS160 strobes for underwater photography. 1st generation Li-ion battery packs is really shitty. They had lots of problems, mine went bad after about 100 cycles. They recently discontinued the 1st gen pack and charger.
2nd generation pack (390€) might be better with a 2nd gen charger (150€) but can’t find any specs anywhere. 1st gen charger is 8.4V - 1A.
Ikelite says
“The newer Smart Charger for Li-Ion (2nd Gen) is safe for use with Lithium Ion (1st Gen) battery packs but will not provide charge termination feedback via the LED indicator light. The Smart Charger for Li-Ion (1st Gen) may be used with this newer battery pack but may reduce the lifetime of the battery.”
Will rebuild the pack myself and need some advice. It’s 2 packs in series, each is 3 cells in parallel so total 6 cells.
1. Where can one find 22430s with or without tabs online? Only ones i find is from China on Alibaba, without tabs.
2. There’s a protection circuit board on pack but strobe got 3 lights that tells the charge so will know when it’s time to stop anyway. Thinking of skipping the pcb, thoughts?
3. Individually charged each cell and 5 has not lost any voltage (4.04-4.07) for 2 days while one is down to 3.9. Might be enough to replace only the bad one, thoughts?
4. If i can’t find 22430s might just use 18350s but those are max 1000 mAh right?
Looks like you’re right. I just did a quick search and couldn’t find any except “from China on Alibaba” as you said. Here are a couple thoughts I had:
1) Find out if anyone else wants any, and organize a group buy if you can get enough participants. I’d be interested in some if you do that. I have some tool packs that could use some.
2) Change to NiMH. The cell size is also known as Sub-C and is found at lots of online battery stores in NiMH and NiCad, just not Li-Ion. You’d simply wire three in series instead of parallel. The li-ion charger should be able to charge them fine. You will be losing a small amount of capacity. I’ve found in general that NiMH tend to have about double or so the capacity in amp-hours compared to li-ion. But at 1/3 the voltage, that makes overall watt-hour capacity about 2/3, which is not too bad unless you really need that other 1/3. NiMH are less sensitive to abuse and less dangerous overall, I think. So, that is another consideration.
Please update here if you find a good source for 22430 cells.
Charge termination for liion should be closer to 4.2V but in any case a drop of more than 1/10 in a few days is reason enough to declare a cell bad. Liion cells solder tabbed in series should have a balancing pcb that monitors each cell(or parallel set). Cells in parallel don’t need more than LVP since they will self balance but they should be charged and checked individually to weed out weak cells. In either case cells in a pack should be same type, same age, same capacity. 22430 is an odd enough size for liion that I wonder if they aren’t simply repackaged 18350’s. If you’re looking into paralleling the cells I’d check to see if a couple 18650’s would fit instead, way more capacity and easier to get. Can you post a pic of the pack and cell arrangement?
RBD, that part looks pretty easy to me. Look at the “mating” face - there appear to be two big flathead screws holding the guts in. The seal is outside that as far as I can see.
EDIT: the screws are only visible on the NiMH versions of the pack. I assume that they are still present on the Li-Ion version and are simply obscured by stickers….
Thanks wight, not clear in the pics I saw. Sealing things for scuba is no easy job. It looks to me like several pairs of 18350’s would be the way to go to maintain 8.4V output but you would want to check each cell often to be sure none went into reversal and that means opening it up as frequently. If the seal is not disturbed/damaged by removing the cells then it shouldn’t be a problem but some things aren’t made to be user accessible. Need to see the cell arrangement inside too.
Whole pack is dissembled. It’s very easy, remove 3 screws and it slides out of the case. It’s put together by an American co called Harding Energy Inc, got serial nr so will contact ’em and see if they can ship any. Ikelite refuses to do so, they want it sent in like rest of all their stuff, big part of their income is based on the service dept.
Resealing is no problem, all o-rings are in the case. Sadly no room for 18650s but 18490 or 18500 will fit. Case is originally built for NiMH Sub-Cs, got 2 of those packs, they use another charger. Probably why Ike settled for 22430s when they upgraded.
NiMH packs are heavier, less buoyant so makes the flash negative in water, additional floats are needed on the rig. This is a huge drawback. Ikelite claims almost double amount of flashes on Li-ion vs NiMH, truth is pretty close.
26500 will fit by removing the “center plastic tube” (holds the mechanism for attaching it to Strobe) the 3 plastic nuts where the screws go in and by grinding down the sides of cb that holds the charging and other connectors.
Bought some Efest IMR 26500 - 3000mAh, that will give 9000 mAh which is super good. Will only have to charge once a week
Will the pcb work with 26500s? Also have to find another place for it.
If only using 2p2s is there any “over the counter” pcb that would fit?
Before you order any cells let’s figure out how the contacts will work. How were the cells arranged in there and how were they connected? 8.4V means 2 cells in series so you will need an even number of cells in the pack.
Thanks for the link, already ordered some via Germany on ebay. It’s 6 cells in 2s3p? (don’t know the right word for it). Will solder them together, know that Li-ion is heat sensitive but it can be done, have no source for point welding. There’s pics in the FB album here: pics
