sorting out cells

100kwh-hunter

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Hello hardworking peopleon your cells,everyone :D

I am almost donewithsorting out 1500 18650cells.
an other bootload is on it way, need way way more time.
All free, non bought, but hard labor.

Above the 2.00 volt is on the "good" pile
Between 0.5 v and the 2 volt is on the "maybe"pile.
Under 0.5, "Junk"pile.
Vented, punktured, deep ankle grinder scare, rusted ect cells, those geta good swimin salt water.

I am waiting for the TPchargersand dischargers, for the final "sort out".(I hope not the fake ones?)
I want tosort them out in steps of 100mah.
Batrium did hisdeliverylast week.
Battery spacers next week i hope

Some other li ion battery's that i have obtained, are beyond 7500mah, it will take longer to figure out where they are in there live.
Possibly a different set up, still reading on this million dollar worth on info forum.

Am i going into the right direction? Did i forget something?

Feel free to correct me where and what you want, it s a bigger learning process than i expected.

Thanks in advance
 
That initial sorting works for junk pile sorting, but other than that you will have to measure the capacity of the cells.
A cell having 2V can still have 80% capacity while a 3V one may only be able to hold 10%. Of course, these are usually exceptions but default harvest voltage is not a perfect indicator since cells may have been stored for different intervals and in different conditions.

Do you have any charger(s) that can measure capacity ?
 
You will find if you test them all the problem has more details/granularity than what meets the eye. Some 0.01 V batteries will charge up and test 3000+ mAh with low IR. Some >2 V ones will be heaters, test to low capacity or what not.

But it's down to your time. If you have more time than cells, I would invest in testing all of them. If you have more cells than time to test them all, please sell all <2 V ones to me in a big batch.
 
Thanks for the replay's.
I am waiting for my orders from china.
I ordered 10 tp4056 for charging and 10 zb2l3 capacity testers.
And some spacers and holders

My plan is to make a board under the name KISS, first charge and then discharge.
Maybe i will order 10 tp4065 extra and set the cut off to 4.1 and wait a month or so.
(I will write on the cell the original mah with what the rate now is)
So it can be a 3 way board with 3x 10 slots in it, with a good power supply that can feed 0,5 amp or 1 amp an hour, per tp, i did not precisely figured that one out yet.
My 5 or 6 volt supply's are 5 10 20 and 40, all stable.(and some pc power supply's)
12v was 10 and 20
24 was i thought 20, yes very heavy.
Yes i collect things from time to time.

I am also afraid that i ordered the fake tp4056 ones, apparently there is something wrong with them, what i dont know.

Sorry, aldo I have more cells then time, way more cells than time, but if the board is going to work, i will simply make an other board or two. 30 cells every day.
But you give my an idea, maybe i can trade some power supply's for more cells?

I need also to rip some packs apart, but the process has to start somewhere.
There is a time for everything and for everything is a time.
How much trouble is it to take the cells out and place them in an other slot and write down the value, 5 minutes before you go to bed?
Next day after the test, i throw them into a box with the same mah.
At least that is the idea.
The ones with 60-70%, 70-80% life span left, will be in different packs for trying out, and easy the pain on the good packs, till i can replace them.
(one pack = 100 cells(3,7v) x 7(3.7v) makes one 200a 24v pack)

After reading all your comments i will even give those 0v a try, there is some writing down on this million dollar site.

Thanks again, with best regards, all info is really appreciated.
 
I received from China some of my orders.
I ordered thetp4056 but got the tc4056a instead.
And the ZB2L3's
I ordered 10 of each of them.

So it's time to build a board.
To keep it simple(stupid) (kiss)
a: charge them to 4.2 volt
b discharge to 3.0 volt ( to find out the mah is left)
c charge them back up to 4.2
d discharge them to 3.5 volt for storage.

So i can do 2 x 5 cells every day
If this works I am going to order 20 of each more to save time?

I piled up all the harvested cells today, and sort them out on mfg stated mah.
I discovered also that there is not much difference between laptop and ebike cells.
Most cells that are used in ebike are also used in laptop and vice versa.
Laptop cells are way more easier to process than ebike/powertool battery's.

I wrote on each cell the mfg mah, and after testing the currant, I will write on the cell the mah that is left in the cell, and so i can calculate the remaining life of the cell, I understood this right? or wrong?

So i can built my packs on the following data: life remaining and the same mah(within 100 or 200mah limits?).
Am i on the right track? did i miss something? making it myself to difficult?

Answers and comments are really appreciated and welcome, thanks in advance.
With best regards
 
Hi , I myself have only just embarked on the same path you are travelling on, to build my own charger.

Be aware tht hte following is only my personal optinion based on 3 months of research and being 60+ years old some life experiences.

Firstly if you want to just build a KISS charger I honestly think you are setting yourself up for a high persentage of cells you are going to discard. You will find it cheaper and more cost effective to buy 5 LiitoKala 500 or Opus chargers and call it good at that.
They will do exactly what your cell holder-TP4056 and HW586 will do. Less work, less headaches and just a few bucks more.

BUT.

You and I and many others that work with used 18650's are not just charging and discharging cells. Those bought chargers are no way good enough or suitable for what we do. We build our chargers as cell RECONDITIONING and testing units. Not just a different name a whole different concept.
Those TP4056a that you bought will not recognize a cell < 2v. That means they are next to useless for recharging laptop recoverd cells that are 3-4 years old. As a few have cheekily said, send us all the "dead" cells you get. :) There is a reason for this there are far fewer real dead cells than you initially think.
TP4056's will not help with these, you need to wake a hibernating cell up to approx 2.5-2.8v THEN your TP4056's will cheerfully go to work.
Somewhere in this forum is a thread I started a few weeks ago about the unit I wish to build, Wolf has given me some excellent advice in that thread. Read what he says, he is much smarter than I.
Also store any cells charged if you can, that way you can test for any that self discharge, which you obviously cant do if you store them in a discharged state.

Hope this helps Mike.
 
How do you plan to get to your final storage voltage

Opus has a switch for such but I don't believe others do

I use an rc charger for bump charge. Lowest setting is .1 amp and I put two cell in parallel
 
Proper storage value for standard normal drain cells is 3.7V not 3.5V. At 3.7V their chemistry is the most balanced.
 
@chablis,
I am planning to let the zb's do there work.
First i charge them, then i discharge them to 3,7 volt.
At least that is the plan.

Thanks.


@ gremlin.
I am planning to charge those "dead" cells with a computer power supply, i want to use the 3.3v outlet.
And maximize the amount of milli amp that is going into it, i thought it was around 50ma.
(from my memory: a LM7803 or something, dont hang me on this)

There is going to be a separate doc for it, they will all get the attention that they need.

I came across some of you're post's, i will read them again.
Also wolf's posts

Thanks in advance
 
How accurate is the discharge cutoff?

maybe same as opus

Need a way to do this automatic so discharge stops In repeatable way across different discharges
 
@chablis,
At this moment i am testing them, cous i want to know also.
Furthermore i have more on the way coming.
It seems that they are pretty accurate, lets say two out of ten are not, within a 0.10 - 0,05 volt cut off.

I am building setup for this different charge/discharge, first i want some numbers on them.
I am curious aswell
Best
 
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