Outstanding, Boaz!
one pack, HP 12 months old minimal use . samsung batteries. 6 Good batteries
second pack./ Toshiba, 6 sanyo red cells. all useable but low mah . 5 years old though.
I tear mine apart with my hands. Works better than cutting the wire as I was getting sparks.
I would not bother doing it if I was in the US, I would buy Rev Jims instead.. Isn't really worthwhile unless the pack is not old. I would not risk reclaimed batteries in multi cell lights.
Scavenged many hp laptop batteries that went bad. Usually there are 2 dead cells and 4 worth keeping. I toss all that are below 2,8V resting voltage. Usually i get sony cells rated 2000-2200 mAh. I think the good ones still hold around 2000 mAh. However i dislike any non protected 18650 cells. At least for gaving them away to people who will forget to respect li-ion technology 5min leater after getting their new toy. Perhaps those can be good to build battery packs with a combined protection circuit in a perhaps 2S2P configuration. Nothing to power at that voltage so far. Would love a 12 solution but dislike 3S configs wholeheartedly. Better 4P2S and a boost circuit of some sort. Efficiency loss vs safety is still reasonable.
In keeping the “B” in BLF, and in the spirit of keeping our green side up, we should have a separate grouping or ‘sticky’ for making use of tossed laptop packs.
Personally I am finding this to be quite the treasure hunt when I can plunder an old pack to find some interesting goodies within.
The China made replacement packs have been pretty disappointing, however I suppose that is to be expected…
I will post pics and results of some more of my adventures as soon as my new charger/discharger arrives.
Great posts guys!
- So far about 1/2 of the cells I have found have both good initial voltage, over 2.5v, and hold voltage off the charger.
–2.02v. was the lowest I have kept. However, I will try and slowly awake a batch of 12 newer Moli’s I dug out that were under 1.0v…
Extracting - The top or wide edge is usually the seamed edge. I take my sharp 4” pocket knife and start to work on the corners, keeping away from the batteries, until I can crack the case and pull it apart. Then I lay the batteries out of the case, cut any wires I need to get them out and apart, and really just carefully pull most of the tabs apart. I use a good smaller vice grips for added pinch and leverage to get off some of the tabs and tab pieces. Then use a small diameter tree shaped diamond coated Dremel bit to clean weld bits off the ends, being very careful not to take any of the original tab surface. Hot glue is a PITA when found between batteries. Carefully cut and peel it off as it will shred the battery wraps. Double sided tape can be testy, keep slicing it away from the case until you can remove the batteries.
Favorite batteries so far Salmon/Flesh colored LG 2200’s tested wonderfully from a 7 year old HP laptop.
- Our township electronics recycling center has been an excellent source, as well as a friends company tech assistant who has collected a few without issue in trade for a LED 18650 powered X2000 DX light.
I have broken up 5 Lenovo Battery packs.
Its important to look for Lenovo since they only bought out IBM in the past 5 years the packs are usually in good shape.
4 of the 5 Packs had Sanyo 2600mah with the light blue tops
the other had Sony Green US18650GR in them
I have had great luck with the laptop pack recovery game. Have only had to recycle 6 of the ~40 Sanyos recovered, and the Sony’s all charged up from just over 3V and are holding their charge just fine.
The 6 Sanyos that were recycled were between 2 and 2.5V. I don’t have a hobby charger yet so its easier for me to just recycle them.
I have salvaged 15 packs with an average cost of $1 per pack. I got about 115 cells total. Out of those, 15-20 were total junk. 15-20 were borderline so I just taped them up and put them aside for emergencies. About 80 decent usable cells that seem to preform better than the cheap 18650s that DD and others sell.
A decent condition Sony, LG, Panasonic or Sanyo cell will probably be better quality than a $4.00 Ultrafire red label POS.
So 80 good cells for $15. That’s less than $0.20 each. Even if your standards are very high and you toss 90% of the cells, it’s still the best bargain out there in 18650.
It’s potluck and many cells will be damaged or worn out but some packs are perfectly good or at least have some really good cells in them.
I am still using the very first salvaged 18650 cell I ever scrounged. It was from my 8 year old Toshiba laptop and it works fine. I can drop it in any light and won’t be able to tell the difference in brightness or runtime. That’s good enough for me. I don’t have a hobby charger.
I have opened 13 laptop packs in the last two weeks and the results are far better than I would have expected.
76 cells with 69 of them above 3.5 volts. , 6 at 2.8V and 1 at 2.1V.
I updated my laptop LG battery thread here:
I will say that the batteries were a complete PITA to get out of the HP battery case. It took me over an hour of cutting with a razor and pulling the plastic apart with pliers. But…if they continue to hold a charge, then it might have been well worth it.
Anybody have information on how LG batteries hold up?
LG’s seem to be amongst the best, in same league as Panasonic and Sanyo. You should be just fine with them 
Sweet! I wonder why my wife’s computer was suffering from reduced run time (10-15 minutes) and was telling us to get a new one? Maybe the protection circuit was failing? Perhaps HP needed some revenue generation? :Sp
I just opened a laptop battery that had a broken screen, had 6 x red Sanyo 2200 Mah which are all good
I’ve opend two Dell packs (nine cells each) and a three cell Acer.
The older Dell was a dud, all nine grey 2200mAh cells were low capacity with high internal resistance.
The newer Dell have older Sanyo cells, six of them were OK, the others were open (0V).
The Acer was only about 2 years old and had Sanyo UR18650A cells. All three cells were right on 3.92V. Discharge tests show them to be better than my TF 2400 flames. They are still very well matched, so I am comfortable using them in my 3D Mag-Lite XM-L T6 mod; Keeping a close eye on them, of course.
If you are handy with a sharp knife and can keep the sharp knife away from your hand, recovering laptop cells can provide some good backup batteries. I ordered a bunch of new Sanyo 2800 cells, so my TF flames and laptop cells will be backups.
I got a bunch of sanyo reds out of an old gateway m520 pack, two were dead but the rest all tested above 3.5v. Charged they drop down to about 4v pretty quickly but they put out good current still, don’t get warm and seem fine. I’ll keep them as backups, occasionally charging them.
I used a dremel to open the case since cutting though with a knife seemed more hazardous and I just cut down and smoothed the tabs for use.
I got Panasonic INR’s out of a lion pack they had for their tools, while not a laptop all the cells seemed fine except for one so I just ripped off the tabs and cleaned up the welds with a dremel cutoff disk. I haven’t done anything with the dead cells yet, should probably dunk them in salt water and then toss them.
I have several battery packs, laptop and handheld scanners. I built up the courage to open the handheld and it has green Panasonic inside. I’ve looked at a few videos and pictures to take them apart I’m just not brave enough to do it yet.
The plastic wrapping is cracked on the batteries and they are held in with some kind of foam wrapper. Is there a clear step by step instruction for a layman to understand to separate the batteries from each other and the protection circuit that anyone knows of?
I have a dmm and will try to test them before I take them apart just have to open them up first.
I used to be alot more careful when tearing packs apart ...I think I was scared ..If you think about it a spark here or there occasionally isn't that big a deal ...Before somethings going to blow up they have to be dead shorted for some amount of time ..
Wear some gloves Get some needle nose or some snips and tear them apart quickly, separate them ..test them for voltage and then spend time knocking off the tabs of the good cells.
I use snips on the corners of the pack to break down the rigidity of the case ..just nipping away the plastic
Interested if anyone else keeps some of the plastic holders in some packs to keep their batteries in .?
My secret weapon >>
At first I thought I would pry it open, soon realized it’s heat glued together to make one plastic piece. Teared off the label and exposed all the batteries. But the hole was too small to get them out. Had to cut one side, the long inside corner off with a dremel. If I needed to I could put it back together XD
Chipped some tiny bits elsewhere off on the inside behind the label.
Asus battery: Sony cells, all seem unusable because their charge is close to none. Voltage was ok, some weeks off the notebook, they do charge and discharge but like to heat up when charging and charge only a little. After 6 years they are officially dead, internal resistance ~30mOhm or something, put them into storage 3.8V but now some are 3.77V and some even 3.6xV. They discharge themselves.
Yes the secret weapon helps to get the small bits. If you don’t want the plastic intact then just force open it, mine is very fragile, after all the years the plastic dried out, cracks easily.
Testing them again.
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/7092
This is what i meant by plastic
I have 2 of these that take 5 18650 batteries each
and 2 more that are the same thing just split in half ...They are nice because they stack well.
I thought they never made a 18650 storacell?
My wifes HP lap top battery was the same. Cells were good volt wise but cap was another story, 400 mah was the best any would pull.
I did buy a Dell lap top battery off Ebay for $3 and it was a good score of 2400mah Samsung cells. All hold 4.2 volts. Capacity is down a bit to 2100-2200mah but for $3 and 6 usable cells I’m very happy!