Repack Battery Pack

[Josette Werst]

Iwould select pure nickel because this is a high current application, then verify that what you receive is nickel, not nickel plated steel. In this case I performed a quick test with a cutoff wheel in a dremel, no sparks is good.

This is a lot of work, and hardly worthwhile if the Aliexpress batteries proved to be good in the longer term, but I am confident that the repacked batter will be good in the longer term and will repack the other original battery shortly.

Benefits of Battery Repacking - Repacking your old battery can be cheaper than buying new. - Higher capacity cells can often be fitted enabling longer battery run times - Repacking is a good option when if your battery is hard to obtain new or no longer produced

I have an Alienware 17 R1 (2014) and have been looking into rebuilding its laptop battery that has been dead for a while now. I have read up quite a bit into battery chemistries etc., but I would appreciate advice from the experts here regarding my little project.

I am a computer enthusiast, but rebuilding a battery pack is something I have never done before. My laptop battery uses a 4S 2P configuration of 18650 cells for a total of 14.8V and 5.6A. I want to replace these cells with higher capacity ones, but am unsure of what cells to buy (unprotected or protected), and if directly soldering onto these cells is really a good idea. What I am worried about the most, however, is if this modification will result in a battery that is unsafe and might result in my house burning down.

One last question that I feel is relevant to this topic. I was also thinking about replacing the optical drive bay of my laptop with more 18650 cells for more battery life, I read about another guy doing this in this forum: -laptops-netbooks/1528118-guide-tutorial-upgrading-your-laptop-s-battery-life-without-wasting-existing-battery-capacity.html. I was wondering if I can do the same safely. I know for a fact that the batteries will fit (took the measurements).

Second, you will need a welder to connect new cells, reliable soldering would require either a low-temperature alloy, or careful temperature control, not to overheat cells. Unprotected cells need some care to handle, to avoid accidental shorts. You might need to deeply discharge the cells before handling-assembling them.

Third, and most important, you will need to match the cells that go to paraller (2P) connections to 1-2% in terms of internal impedance and capacity. Without matching the 2P sections will wear itself down rather quickly, in 50-100 cycles, and die. When the smart batteries are assembled by manufacturer, their factory has thousands of cells to select proper matches using special testers. You don't have this luxury.

Battery Repacking is a great way of bringing your old battery packs back to a brand new condition. This involves disassembling the pack completely, removing all of the old internal cells, and replacing them with brand new cells.

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This Instructable is not meant to teach you How To but rather Why Not To rebuild your own eBike battery. Having just completed a months-long rebuild of mine, I have a list of painful lessons to share, all of which add up to this one piece of advice: if you can purchase a new lithium battery pack for your eBike, do so. There's a lot going on inside your eBike pack, welding batteries is a finicky business that requires specialized equipment that's not good for much else, the final product is unlikely to be really reliable or to last a very long time, the chance of fire or explosion is real, and there are probably other projects from which you can learn a good deal more.

The big, heavy brick that powers your eBike is a set of battery packs wired serially with a controller that governs how each set is charged and monitors the battery's performance when charging and being discharged. Each battery pack is itself made up of individual cells (which is what most people think of as a "battery," AA, AAA, what have you). To rebuild such a pack the main steps are as follows:

You face two major challenges should you undertake this project. First, the new battery has to replicate the old one in essentially every detail. The controller expects a particular voltage under particular conditions, and is more or less sensitive to temperature, too. As important, you're dealing with a lot of electrical connections in a small space, and a lot of electrical power, so shorts are out of the question...and yet surprisingly, one might say "shockingly," likely to happen. Precision counts.

But it's the second one that is really tough. Heat is bad for batteries, but heat, generated by electrical current, is what you're using to weld the cells to the metal strips that will conduct electricity between them. It is important to get as strong a weld as possible but you must inject as little heat as possible into the battery. Too much heat and you degrade or even puncture the battery, too little and you end up with a weak weld and, eventually, a loose connection deep inside your construct, with unpredictable but by no means helpful results. It's a fine line you'll be walking. What's worse, there are many factors that influence the quality of a weld: the cleanliness of the surfaces being welded; the thickness and shape of the electrodes; their placement in relation to one another; the firmness of the contact between them and the metal being welded, and between the metal and the battery beneath; the length of time allowed for the weld; the mass of the metal adjacent to the points being welded; and likely other factors, too. Again, precision counts...but how are you going to achieve precision with these many variables across a couple of hundred welds?

Consider just a few tricky bits in one of the packs, pictured, under construction, above. Bent metal, lots of extra insulating tape, a punctured battery. None of this is the product of carelessness, it's the inevitable (as best I can tell) result of working with hobbyist equipment (a manual, lightweight welder, as opposed to a computer-controlled, industrial one; scissors instead of a heavy-duty laser cutter). But maybe you like a challenge, hopeless odds, playing the underdog. Very well, if you must, here are a few recommendations, since you insist on proceeding:

The electric car revolution requires large amounts of new batteries. But at some point, the batteries need to be replaced. The entrepreneurial company RePack has developed a solution that allows a third of the electric car batteries to be reused elsewhere.

Energy storage will be very important in the green shift. According to a study from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, installed capacity will grow 170 times over the next 20 years, not least due to the increasing roll-out of electric cars. The electric car batteries will eventually not be able to serve their original purpose and hence be discarded. McKinsey has estimated that over the next ten years, the proportion of discarded electric car batteries will increase 200 times. That is an equivalent of approx. 3 million batteries a year. Even if this is a known fact, existing battery systems rely on outdated battery operating and controlling systems. Battery management systems (BMSs) are pre-configured at the factory for operating the battery for the entirety of its lifetime without taking into account degradation and usage patterns. This leads to a large number of batteries being discarded years ahead of time.

RePack has found that around a third of these batteries are functional and can be used elsewhere. Second-life batteries can live on for more than 10 years if selected, configured and operated correctly. The company has therefore developed a battery cloud, where they collect information from the batteries' first life, from the repackaging and from the second life (number of kilometers driven, why they were discarded, how they performed, etc.). Based on this information and using the battery cloud, they find out how the batteries can be packed together and enter a system within another area of use. This is the reason why RePack started building a solution that enables a data-driven approach to repurposing.This solution is called the Battery Cloud, and its key functionalities are: Live and historical battery system data; Over the air updates that bring safety and performance improvements based on learning from all of RePack battery systems; Customizable notifications; APIs for integration with third-party applications.

The company mission is to enable maximum value generation from second-life EV batteries by repurposing them in a streamlined, safe and cost-effective way. Using second-life EV batteries, RePack estimates its battery systems to have an up to 95% lower carbon footprint compared to systems based on new battery cells. They develop novel technologies for reassembly and operations to convert usable second life EV batteries into modular plug-and-play battery storage systems. To customers, the Battery Cloud brings the ability to follow their battery system data in real-time as well as peace of mind that their battery system is safely monitored and updated. To RePack, the Battery Cloud is a key tool to further extend the understanding of how second-life batteries perform and how to maximize their value to customers.

You name it, SIMPOWER can repack it. SIMPOWER are Battery Repacking specialists. From Survey battery packs to power tool batteries and everything in between. Why throw away your old power tool away when you can have the battery repacked, in most cases improving the run time and life of the battery.

We have regular deliveries of fresh cells, ensuring that you get the freshest battery possible. Unlike premade replacements that have sat on the shelf for a long time and have often lost half the battery life before you even start.

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