Reclaimed 18650 Test Charge Discharge How To

Getting Started in reclaiming 18650 Lithium Ion Cells from Power Tool and Laptop battery packs is a great way to get a pile of cells. But once you do... Then what?!

Here I step through the process of Testing, Charging, and then Discharging the cells to find the capacity of each cell.

Hopefully this helps to demystify topics surrounding how to process recovered 18650 cells.

Tools Needed:
- Basic volt/Multi-meter to check the cells voltage once liberated from the packs.

- Lithium Ion safe charger units like the TP-4056's

- RC grade charger/discharger unit, Like the Venom ProCharger used here, or a SkyRC IMax B6 or similar.

Links:

[barrettt]

Great tip: I have recovered low voltage batteries (like 0.01v-0.2v) by hooking up a fully charged battery for a few seconds. It got it high enough to be charged by my charger and tested the same as all my others and have had no problems with them so far.

[danielhawkins]

Finally, ...someone explained capacity testing in SIMPLE terms, ...thanks bro👍

[garrygemmell]

Good instructional video.
Nice to add specifics for 18650 - best rate to charge at, voltages, charge mah etc
How to get LIO on the imax b6.
Most people just seem to use LIPO.

[charlieuk]

Nice video pink ones rock from dead laptop battery's I am using a iMax only thing I noticed is that I use lilo not Lipo not that it makes much difference takes it down to 3.1v

[ModifywithManoj]

Nice video thanks. One query when it's full charge u also get one current reading, what is that reading related to. If possible can u make a video on full charge

[PerchEagle]

I hope you bought one of those 6s chargers with colored displays. Those chargers have good features and will save you a lot of time.

[ZubairKhan-vsfe]

Hi. Is there a faster way to do the discharge test. Ive got about 100 old batteries

[AlexandreLollini]

I try and charge all, I recycle those that heat up. I let them sit for 2 days, those loosing more than 0.1V are recycled. From whatever resting voltage, I do capacity test.

[gelisob]

It is a bit more complex than just judging by the initial voltage. You can do that but you might be throwing away quite many usable cells. Let me explain: I recommend checking voltage of cell pairs before separating them. Why? Average lapi batt has 3 pairs. If you have very old batt with 0.5v 0.5v 0.0v pairs - you can clearly identify that one pair got bad before others. And the other two might recover fully. I just tested with one of my 0.5v pair and it resulted 4400mah capacity after pulling it up again. But if you pulled all things apart before testing then what might happen is: you have 0.5v pair from a pack that had pairs 3.7v 3.7v 0.5v -- that is a failed one in it's original pack and probably not worth looking at.

[FrancisSuarez]

Awesome video. Thanks for the easy explanation on Mil Amps

[MCsCreations]

Man, I'm going to make a huge battery charger, to charge up to 6 at once. (The problem is getting 5v 6A for that, or it's going to take the hole life to charge.) But, anyway, got a notebook battery that all cells had 0.67v. Recharge them and all of them hold more then 4v (4.18v, 4.17v and 4.15v). About the tester, there's a cheap board for that too. :)

[aspergerhellasbn]

why you select lipo discharge you ca not select li-lon discharge?

[JasonSimpson]

Most 18650s are rated to discharge to 2.75v safely. one mistake you are making, though, is assuming that 2000 mAh is a good cell. In reality, how good a cell is has more to do with percentage of remaining capacity. You have to know the original capacity of the cell to know if it's remaining capacity is within what you would find acceptable. This also means you shouldn't discount a cell that has a discharge rating of 1400 mAh if its factory rating was 1500.
A 3000mAh factory rated cell that tests near 2000 is only 66 percent and near the end of its life.

[prerecordedresponse]

Buy the Opus 3100 battery charger instead. It can charge/test 4 cells at a time.

[nyrubin]

Hey dude. Some links would've been nice in ur bio 💪

[DragonsREpic]

there's no such thing a a negative voltage -_-

[taunteratwill]

NOT AGAIN PLEASE This kinda 18650 shit is so much repeated!