This week, I’m continuing my tool pack teardowns with a pair of Rigid 18V Lithium Ion packs out of Canada - and, in one of them, 18650s produced in Canada!
(Comments from Blogger)
2017-05-09 by Mike Halcrow
Will the XTREEM XP VAPE-R 300000 MEGAFYRE work in my cell phone?
2017-05-12 by Russell Graves
Absolutely! It’ll give you radically more numbers than the puny 1300 batteries in your phones!
2017-05-12 by Russell Graves
… you know, an 18650 pack on the back of a Nexus 5X would offer some incredible battery life. I may have to try this.
2017-05-14 by dude mcginty
I know everyone says 0V cells shouldn’t be reconditioned. But I’ve done exactly that to about 20 cells (some laptop, some power tools) I’ve procured. Each time only charging with 200mA, carefully monitoring the temperature of the cells. I must say I haven’t noticed an issue. They all charged seemingly normally, hold a charge properly, function without issue, and their capacity isn’t significantly affected. Of course, I would never dream of attempting that with cells with any visible corrosion…those are indeed dead to me. Am I a cautionary tale waiting to happen? Or is “don’t revive 0V cells” one of those urban legend things that everyone retells but has never experienced? Hopefully you can enlighten me while I recover from having my kidneys removed after having awakened in a hotel bath tub full of ice with “Call 9-1-1” written on my chest.
2017-05-14 by Russell Graves
It will certainly work, most of the time. As you’ve observed.
The problem is that lithium cells are physically stressed at full state of charge, empty state of charge, and are seriously stressed at 0V. They may behave fine for a few cycles, then have something let go internally, enter thermal runaway, vent toxic and flammable fumes, etc. Or they may be fine long term. There’s no way to tell.
I’ve also seen cells driven negative, which could then eventually drain down to 0V again - and I’m not sure what sort of bad things happen on a reversed cell, but I’m sure it’s not good.
I’m very, very conservative in my treatment of lithium cells. I’ll beat them up a bit on the discharge side, but I won’t recharge any cell that’s below 2.5V (I consider 3.0V a reasonable “absolute low voltage cutoff” for a cell). And if it’s at 0V, I don’t know how long it’s been there, if it’s been reversed, etc. It’s not worth the risks for me to try charging them again. I have more 18650s than I can shake a stick at, brand new, OEM.
2017-05-16 by dude mcginty
Cool…thanks for the reply. Your explanation and conservative approach definitely makes sense.
2018-07-27 by Unknown
hey thanks bro all ur information was very helpful The Rigid 18V Hyper Lithium Ion Battery i have one ana every time
i put it to charge it shows defetive so i just want to know where is the (fuse metal segments that are designed to operate as a fuse if there’s some sort of short circuit) where is that located on the board?
2020-01-01 by Scott
On the board there appears to be 5 pins for communication. CLK DATA GND 5v and RST. Do you think these are the pins that are used in the newer models that have a bluetooth radio in them?