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A strip down of the Wickes 18V power tool battery. This thing has minimal protection circuitry and definitely no balancing.
A strip down of the Wickes 18V power tool battery. This thing has minimal protection circuitry and definitely no balancing.
Hi
Sir I needed do you have 10.8v 1.3 Ah
i've got to this video by googling Wickes 18v Lithium – I have two 12 year old battery packs that were both still going strong until a few days ago when one stopped taking charge after having been left out in rain – I'd like to revive/repair the battery pack – can you direct me to a tutorial please
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Make a connection for single cell charging through a balance lead just in case cus they never same resistance 1 will always raise it voltage faster than others that am low resistance it's a nightmare lol
Maybe hook the other end only to the nickel rather than a massive steel heatsink?
its actually quite easy to solder the negative of 18650s, i've done around 1000 cells 😉
Any chance on a teardown video of the 20V Ozito/Einhell PowerXchange battery?
My understanding of the whole balancing thing (and I am by no means an expert, I just fly drones a lot :-))
Balancing is usefull if you want to shove the most energy possible into them to then get the longest duration out of them when using. That's why balancing is so important for RC and drones, because you want them running for as long as possible or at the highest voltage and amperage they will give you.
I can't recall seeing cells get out of balance by a huge amount other than when a cell was so severely degraded the whole pack was pretty much useless for it's main purpose (it can still have some uses otherwise). So while the balancing takes a LOT of extra time on the charger, you don't get a huge amount of extra energy into them (but again, for RC a small amount can mean the difference between a 1st or 2nd place). Or with drones, that tiny bit extra power can give you the seconds difference between a landing and a crash.
For power tools… I really don't see the purpose. You're not going to be bothered by a few seconds of extra use, you just slap on a new battery and off you go. And you also don't want your batteries to be in the charger for hours. You want the battery to be charged by the time the ones you're using have run out, quick cycle times are more important, you're not (really) limited by how often you have to do a battery change.
The bonus for the seller is of course they have you hooked on a consumable and you'll be needing to buy new batteries on a regular basis because small imbalances in charge times of each cell will have cells grow more and more imbalanced to the point the pack becomes unusable because it "can't hold a charge" anymore (it usually can if you rebalance them). This is usually compensated for by using cells that have a higher density, more "C" and/or better temperature ranges but lower amounts of guaranteed charge cycles, so it's sort of built-in obsolesence.
On earlier videos, it looked like the cell balancing was done by the electronics in the charger, but that battery pack looks like there's no access to allow anything to measure the individual cell voltages, so it seems like they're relying entirely on all the cells being exactly the same chemistry so they charge at exactly the same rate. That won't last for too long, and most people would eventually throw out the pack for having too little charge, when all they'd need to do is open it up and individually charge each cell to full charge to restore the battery life to almost new.
You can easily solder 18650 bases as long as you have a big iron 60W + and it only takes a couple of seconds.
Nice to see Bakelite still making an appearance in things – it's like the 1930s :o)
Low capacity cells are common in powertool batteries, because they are made from thicker materials that can give out higher current and may last more charging cycles.
Julian, can you test a few single cells for capacity, current draw, and protection? I'd like to see how well those Samsung cells handle real use (and whether those cells were refurbished or not). Thanks!
Found ones like this from aldi australia. Initially thought dangerous with no balancing. Looked up cell datasheet, it's tolerant of overcharging without fire.
looks very dangerous
i would say the missing component's shape matches a 2.5mm jack. possibly for charging from another power supply?