Buying surplus li-ion batteries from a good company to deal with I am not getting paid for this info
sam_sam_sam
Posts: 2,286
I have been looking for a company to buy slightly used batteries and new batteries for some time now and have found one
One note they are not the fastest place to send your order out quickly but they are responsive to your questions and concerns which is what I expected from a company when I do business with them and that being said
The site is Battery Hookup.com
Here is one item that is inexpensive and if you have the right tools to open the case it a good solution for buying li-ion batteries
https://batteryhookup.com/products/4-18650-2200mah-cells-in-modem-batteries
In the pictures below is something that I just bought from them that is really nice item it has the BMS protection board built in the batteries are good quality and this battery pack has a voltage of around 22 volts when it was shipped to me it is a 32 volt battery pack with a enclosure that comes with it
Unfortunately they are out of stock again for the second time since it was first offered one note if you see something that you might be interested do not wait very long because it might be already gone and out of stock again here is the link to this item but if they can not get more stock in again very soon they remove it from there website and when they have stock again they will post it again
https://batteryhookup.com/products/samsung-8s?variant=35196071870626
Here is another interesting item that is also out of stock at the moment
https://batteryhookup.com/products/diy-18v-100w-motor-battery-bms-switch?variant=41178051051682
This item has a 2 speed controller and a battery fuel gauge built in and very powerful motor that you can some serious air flow from this is a great buy for me because I am going to use the motor controller on some LED lights too have two different brightness levels
And the item that I posted the picture of I have LED yard light that the switching power supply took a Smile and had leaking capacitor and had been encapsulated with some type of plastic and was unrepairable
I might also build a project using some of these batteries with a Basic Stamp 2 to monitor battery voltage and report the battery voltage level as part of the project ( solar project )
One note about this battery pack I just did a test of 3 battery cells and the results are only about 80% useable life left in this group of cells I am going to remove all battery cells and test each one to see how bad this situation really is I will post the results when I have more information about what is going on here
Here is one more item that I will make some comments and the last one for now
This item is a good buy if you need and want an enclosure for your battery cells but I caution you on buying this you might get a battery pack that the cells are at the end of the useful life and you might get one that the BMS balancing protection board does not work correctly anymore or you might get one that everything works correctly and that a really good deal ( if you get lucky and everything works correctly do not charge this battery pack with more than 2 amp because you will fry the BMS balancing protection board it does NOT control how much current goes threw the BMS balancing protection board because this is done on the charger end of it )
If someone is interested in how to use the BMS balancing protection board on this battery pack
please ask and I will take some pictures of how this can be done
But when you buy this item make sure that you monitor the battery temperature as you are charging this battery pack if it starts heating up ( this starts happening when the battery voltage on the cells reaches about 4.00 ) stop charging them and disassemble the battery pack and check each individual battery cell with a battery tester like the SkyRc IMAX b6 battery tester with a temperature sensor that is a accessory for this charger and go to setup and change the default settings to 32*C so that you do not have a thermal runaway issue and things can go horribly wrong
One note some of these batteries might still have some life to them if when you are testing them and you get a milliamperes results over 1000 milliamperes hours and you can charge them up to 4.1 volts and they do not get real warm but you can only charge them at 500 milliamperes or less anything else than 1000 milliamperes hours will probably not charge up with out over heating
There is a disclaimer notification on this issue in the description of this item please take note of this
I have made a monster cell phone/tablet mobile battery pack out of some these batteries this battery pack will charge my tablet for several days on one charge
You do have to reconfigure the battery cell for all of them to be in parallel one note if you do this on ones that have a percentage battery fuel gauge you are limited to the maximum milliamperes hours rating on the battery pack but this can be over come by using a switch and splitting the battery milliamperes hours in half and you have a more accurate fuel gauge ( because when the fuel gauge read 0% it will still run for hours before going dead ) for this battery pack enclosure
I think that this battery pack enclosure would make a good battery pack power supply with a solar panel for a Propeller or a Basic Stamp in a remote location this is the reason I posted this item that Battery Hookup has for a project idea
Comments
Good price, I looked at ordering ten of the 4X 18650 batteries and the only shipping option is fedex ground, which nearly doubles the price. Still under a buck a cell.
Subtotal $20.00
Shipping $17.81
Taxes $0.79
Total USD $38.60
To make it very easy to open these packs up if you buy this item and make a tool
( for 18650 battery type of cells )
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Anvil-2-1-2-in-4-Edge-Scraper-Blade-2-Pack-42B-ANV/309996641
Here is a picture of the the tool I made for opening up plastic cases enclosures
How you use this tool is pick one the cutting edge and hit the bar with a hammer enough to split the enclosure apart then turn it over to the other side of the enclosure and do the same thing ( one note because of the way this scraper blade is made it very unlikely to touch the battery cells if you do not hit the tool extremely hard this should not be an issue )
I would caution you that if it has pouch li-ion battery cells I would be extremely careful of how much force you apply with hammer because this type of cells are not as strong of an enclosure for the contents of the battery cell and are very easily puncture and things will go horribly wrong very quickly
So did you order any of them
Hello!
Yes it is a beginning. I looked at both the bundle of 18650 ones and the traditional pouch style ones.
erco,
According to DiodesGoneWild you can get free 18650s from old laptop batteries.
He is one of my favorite YouTuber but sometimes he gets a little carry away with some of his videos
Hello!
All I can say is be careful.