Harbor Freight Bauer Battery Pack Tear Down

We tear down a Bauer Battery Pack and have a look inside
Batteries are Samsung INR 18650-15M M

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[filstoy]

I bought one of these yesterday and it was bad right out of the package. Same exact battery. I always charge them fully before actually using them. It would not charge although it did run the drill. I actually bought several and this is the only one that did this so I knew it wasn't the charger. The two led's on the charger flashed rapidly. When I pressed the charge level on the battery only two of the three led's would light. Out of curiosity, I opened it up to see what was in it and they were Highstar cells marked ISR18650-1500, 3.7v, 5.55wh . I measured the total voltage and got 18.5 volts. I also measured each cell and got 3.7v on each one, no dead ones. Not really sure why the charger didn't like it unless something in the led board was bad. Just thought the info might be interesting to somebody.

[samnelson]

I just opened up 4x 3ah batteries bought in 2022 and they are all high quality circuitry and nickle strips like a Milwaukee (basically, no wires), but the cells are HighStar 18650s, which is what Ryobi and others use. These are a decent quality cheaper cell...but certainly not a Samsung 25r.
I love my Bauer tools, haven't broke one too in 2 years of hard use, and finally 1x 3ah battery died after the kids killed it so many times on an electric buggy.

[BobCollins]

A couple of comments.
1) The BMS only applies to charging. There would be no BMS in a tool.
2) The other device in your video takes energy from the battery and provides power to other devices. It is NOT a charger.
3) At this time, Bauer 20v and Milwaukee M12 are the only battery systems l know of that don't have BMS logic in the battery packs. I like this design choice.

Thank you for the teardown.

[allen]

thanks for the teardown video. very informative and saved me some time. this is inclining me to believe all other pins besides outer + and - are only needed during charging. if thats so, quick question. suppose i wanted to parallel a couple of bauer batteries to get longer runtime on a light or whatever. would it simply be connecting the outer positive and negative pins in a parallel config with no need or use of other pins ? im envisioning a homemade adapter connecting multiple batteries (of the same amp hr) with the final connecting battery connecting to the tool. if this isnt the case, then would that mean i would need to parallel all pins in each battery that i intend to connect to the tool ? thanks.

[Charliemmafan]

How come when you open the Bauer battery pack the batteries are Samsung but when other people open it up they claim that they're much lower quality brands instead?

[JohnnyBags]

what does a 9 volt battery and a butthole have in common?

punchline
* You know it's wrong, But your tongue ends up there anyway...👅


dad joke 😅

[queefersutherland]

Are you in reidsville? Guy at hf said a dude tests some hf stuff and mentioned this.

[gregryan]

All this is good to know, the teardown was very informative. BTW, I don't think it would be a problem to replace those low amp batteries with higher amp ones. You could double your run time, yes? Thanks

[blendpinexus]

just because the cells are samsung doesn't mean they can't be crap. bauer seems to have cheaped out on what series of battery they chose cause holy shit the 1.5ah struggles with anything needing more than 20w of juice.

[chubbyelf]

For what it's worth, I just opened mine up and saw they are ISR 18650 (not INR). These seem to be a cheap Chinese battery rather than the nice Samsung ones.

[Charliemmafan]

From what many people say Harbor freight used to put the more expensive higher quality Samsung cells in all their battery packs but now lately they use high star in all the Bauer battery packs I believe and in the non extreme performance battery backs for Hercules but the extreme performance battery packs from Hercules that have a 3 year warranty instead of just 90 days have the Samsung battery cells in them but they are just in the 4, 8 and 12ah extreme performance Hercules batteries only now supposedly which is strange but for some reason most all of the tool brands are going with high star Chinese made batteries now instead of the more expensive supposedly higher quality Korean Samsung sells sadly.

[justme...abc]

There would be no reason to have a BMS in the device using the battery. The "extra" terminal should be reading the resistor to monitor temperature. The BMS would be built into the charger and would balance the cells during charging. Again there is no reason to have a BMS on the load/device!

[surfreadjumpsleep]

Or maybe they just don't bother with balancing cells.