DIY Laptop Battery Rebuild

Only StormEffect would come up with some thing like that...

 

This was an interesting lecture. I have some things to point out, if i may.

1) Perhaps the battery cover could have been nicely cut with a saw in two halves so that they could have been glued back together when everything was finished.

2) One reason the new accumulators performed so badly could be that they are old themselves, so that their electrochemical elements have been spontaneously reacting.

3) If some of you have the impression this is dangerous... IT REALLY IS! Producer batteries, on rare occasions, have the bad habit of exploding without the user being at fault. Not only that, but a "cold" weld or a short in your own diy battery compartment can do physical damage to your notebook.

 

Well, considering the hidden wires and circuits that hugged the walls of the battery compartment I would have chopped through them. The cutting would have been much cleaner if I had a nice pack of razor blades, but my boss wont let me keep weapons in the office

 

Ohhh someone's been bad!

 

unless your £400 laptop requires a £100 battery like myne does, that lasts all of a year and a half.

 

Allight! Someone with the balls to hack stuff up!

First of all, you can open the dell battery packs without breaking them. You just have to pry more and be really really patient.

As for your results...the reason your cells fall short of the originals is because the Dell brand is using 3.7V with a mAh rating of 2400mAh. 2400*2= 4800/1000=4.8*11.1 =53.8WH. If you wanted an improvement you could've used 2500mAh batteries for 56WH but the ones you chose only gives you 37WH, OUCH!

You'll also notice that there's room for 3 more cells in there. If you made a pack with 9 2500mAh cells (that's 1 extra cell in each parallel circuit) you'd have a battery rated at 83WH! Compare that to if you used another 3 of the 1650mAh batteries which would only give you 54WH...about the same as the original battery just heavier.

I just wanted to point out that although this is a cool post better planning would've given better results. BTW 10 2500mAh protected 18650's can be had for around $40 shipped.

 

One of our techs had a good experience with an un-named vendor that "professionally" rebuilds batteries and we needed a battery for an IBM-T60 - Battery p/n 92P1137.

So 4 weeks later they send 2 batteries due to the lateness of the order. After plugging it in, the Battery light flashes and Power Manager indicates "Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one". After contacting the vendor, they apologize and send two more .. with the same results .. anyone know of a quick fix? I still have the original bad battery that is way low on power but never had the batteries completely removed.

 

Currently in Dubai and looking for Li-Ion 18650 cells - local Chinese markets have unmarked cells on offer - highly doubt the quality of those.

See here how far i got:

D610 laptop battery replacement

Cheers

 

bought a Chinese battery to replace the ailing battery of my Dell Vostro 1500, but it did not work very well, the connector was not a good fit and I broke it by forcing it in, but that was not the biggest problem...

The overload protection would prematurely trigger. I could be using Skype at around 50% CPU usage, about 35W I guess, and the laptop would suddenly go off without warning. I suffered some data loss as a result.

So, I transplanted the original Dell protection circuit to the Chinese cells, it does not trip the overload protection even at full load and it gives me a good 3 hours of use. However, the battery meter is never correct.

The full capacity remains 8036mWh and I tried the full discharge without hibernate and then full charge cycle many times, but the full capacity did not move a bit.

Is this a Dell thing? I heard other brands would creep up the full capacity after a few cycles, but mine never went up the slightest bit. It was like a one-way street.

Any ideas?

 

nice thread lol thanks for takeing the time to post

 

The Chinese battery had a bq2060 chip for protection and a 24C02 for storing battery parameters. The interface pins are: P-, P-, NC, GND, GND, DATA, CLK, P+, P+

I had a tool to retrieve the 24C02 EEPROM and program it. A few parameters were rather wrong - the value of the sense resistor was programmed incorrectly - that was used to measure the current draw. Also the maximum current was wrongly set to 6000mA. With 3 cells in parallel and each capable of up to 5A, this is too low. I will be setting it conservatively to 9A and see how this goes.

The original Dell battery had a bq29330.

 

I found I was barking up the wrong tree - bq2060 is only for managing the gas gauge and there is a totally different circuitry for overload protection. The parameter I talked about was for calculating some charging parameter correctly.

The original Dell had a bq29330 and bq8030dbt. To my dismay, I discovered that these days battery circuits are locked against battery rebuilds. The Chinese hacked the battery chips and the knowledge is highly valuable.

 

It's been a long time since I've rebuilt any packs. I rebuilt them for my Sony VAIO PCG F190 and VAIO PCG GR300 without any problems. I haven't tried on my Asus M6Ne though one of the packs is pretty weak now. (But now I've switched my primary use to my HP dv5z so there's not much motivation...) Yeah, the hardest part is prying open the seams of the case without totally breaking them, so you can seal them back together again later.

 

Could I have RMA'ed my cheap laptop replacement battery? I could have but didn't think it would have helped a design flaw. I didn't know there is so much educational value buying a non-OEM battery but I am forced to instead of letting otherwise perfectly great new cells sitting around (they degrade even if unused).

So, like I said the circuit had a bq2060 as gas gauge which communicates with the laptop. The actual protection chip is a Seiko which comes in about 20 varieties in a series with different overcharge/undercharge/overcurrent voltages. You have to get a specific part number for specific voltages, the voltages are not configurable without replacing the chip. The particular chip used would trip the overcurrent protection if the voltage drop exceeds 0.1V.

My laptop battery suddenly shuts off at about 42W of power consumption, or 3.8A if we assume a battery voltage of 11.1V. The sense resistor is shared across the gas gauge chip and the overcurrent protection chip and is 0.025 ohm. V=IR and if we multiply 3.8A and 0.025 ohm we get very close to 0.1V, exactly the overcurrent protection voltage.

So, I diagnosed the issue and temporarily used a 0.005 ohm sense resitor from the Dell OEM circuit and transplanting it, and it has not tripped the overcurrent protection since then. But, now the gas gauge bq2060 is incorrect. Its EEPROM needs to be programmed the sense resitor value, but it does not allow a sense resistor that low. I am ordering a 0.01 ohm sense resistor from mouser.com. This would set the overcurrent protection at 10A, which is conservative for 3 cells in parallel.

I can almost open a battery rebuild shop now...

 

Howdy people,

I joined this site and found this How To... only yesterday, but I was way past getting the Inspiron 6000 6-cell case apart by the time I was reading. There are some crucial, I believe, pics missing between the first pic of the new blue Li-ion cells and the second pic when they are back in the case and covered in clear ... cellophone/tape???

Obviously the financial sense of doing this yourself is effectively pointless, given the cost you can pic up refurbed battery packs on fleabay etc, but I think I'm going to give it a go, just because.

Firstly, I was a bit freaked out by the article's use of 'snips' to cut away the black plastic casing, as such stuff is designed for experts to safely get to in future, for disposal/refurb practices I would have thought. I used a flat-head screwdriver to start splitting the casing apart gently where the connector (???) bit is on the battery. A bit of a twist and a bit of a pry to get it going. But the rest of the casing is, indeed, a headf**k. For this I used a very small flat-head precision screw driver (If the width of the tip is too wide it will split/warp the plastic edge; too thin and it's not 'strong enough' to cut through the glue under the seam I thought). I inserted the tip just under the plastic 'hem/seam' and slowly and patiently (focussing carefully not to stab myself and have the screwdriver snap and/or poke my eye out) PUSHED it away from me so it levered apart the plastic seams, which obviously had been glued together from factory. Once I got to a corner, so as not to break/crack the plactic as best possible, I kept pushing the screwdriver just enough to 'stretch' the plastic edge a wee bit out from its natural state. Then you remover he screwdriver and try to come in straight, perpendicular from the original line of motion, if that makes sense? Maybe not... Er... picture the edge of a bulding. If you rub your hand against the brick, don't 'round' the corner to get to the next side, stop just after the corner, move your body to the other side of the building with a few steps, then continue moving your hand in a straight line in THAT new direction - so you've going in a nice clean geometric 'L' shape. The noise of the glue/edges coming apart was tripping me out a bit as I'm a bit of an OEM look freak, so wanted to keep the casing edges schmick looking and not all jaggered or stuffed.

Anyway, that's where I am at. I've found the replacement batteries on ebay, and yes they are 18650 3.7V 2400mah cells with tags already on them.

I've also seen - as I'm sure you all have - that 'glossed over' Youtube video of that fast-talking American guy (not becuase he's American, but becuase he races through the instructions) 'hacking' an old Gateway battery, plus I've seen another of a pro factory spot welding on the tabs with a special machine to Li-ion cells. Thus I've seen how fast and short the time is that the actual 'heated' tips are allowed to be in contact with the exposed faces of a Li-ion cell if at all (like half a nanosecond at best), so I've mentally got a grasp of how not to balls it up I believe.

What I need to know is, if anyone is still reading this thread, do you still need the original metalic frame that seems to have been spot welded to the original cells? I cannot see from the pics in the How To here if they were still retained (prised off gently from the dead cells and then professionally spot welded back on by someone? or just held into place somehow?) or did you just contruct your own framework to connect all the batteries together. Like, I haven't ripped my old cells out yet, so I cannot judge if the spot welded bits on the old cells come off easily or will yanking them off 'rip/twist' the metal beyond future use? The latters seems to be the case judging from the pics.

Because if I can get the metal frame bits (I call them that, excuse me if these are the wrong words/terms) without butchering them, I'd obviously like to re-use them with the new cells' tabs when soldering. And on that note, did those metal bits have to be 'spot welded' on originally to work/allow current to run through, or will the same effect happen if electrical tape (safer from a 'hack' point of view) is in play to ensure the metal frame bit touches the bottom of the cells and stay in place etc??


I'm sure I've lost you all and have asked some really stupid questions, but if someone's happy to advise then I'm all ears.

Cheers.

 

Anyway, I bought a fleabay product with a design flaw ending up having to DIY anyway. A little cyanoacrylic glue would fix things and after engineering the proper overload protection sense resistor my battery has been going strong since then.

To answer your question my fleabay batteries have insulated wires between the battery terminals and the circuit board. Not sure if this is safer or more dangerous than a metal frame. In any case you probably want to drain most of the charge in the batteries (but not overly so!).

 

Cheap option is to look for an existing manufacturer's battery on ebay, rated at a multiple of 3.7V (7.4V, 11.1V, 14.8V) using 18650 cells with high Whr rating, break open the battery and use it's cells. High capacity 2900ma cells from a asus 1000HE would be great to use

 

The highest capacity 18650 cells that I can find are Panasonic 18650 2900 mAh cells.

9 of them mean 3.7V * 2900 * 9 = 96.5 WH !!! Significant improvement in capacity and runtime.

http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-cgi/jvcr13pz.cgi?E+BA+3+ACA4001+NCR18650+7+WW


Possible to use these? Any reason why it wouldn't recognize that capacity correctly?

Cost-wise, they come out to be about $11 each, or $100 so it's not cheap. maybe not even cheaper than OEM stuff. It doesn't seem possible to buy that high WH off the shelf however.

 

Hi all...I am new to the forum; I found this site by (you guessed it), having troubles rebuilding a laptop battery. Thanks to anyone in advance who might be able to shed some light on my problem.

A bit of my history...
I worked in Telecommunications for 27 years..
I repair computers for a sideline...I am semi-retired.

Computer is a Compaq Presario R3000.
The original battery is a HSTNN-UB02 (4400MAH)

The laptop charge light came on and went out ever so quickly on pwer-up. With the battery removed, the laptop works very well on AC.

SO...
I took the battery apart...and found 2 of the 8 CR18650 cells to be very dead. (and would overheat rapidly if I connected the 14.8 volt string to a car battery charger). The rest would begin charging...

I made a simple diagram to aid in the rebuilding. This is a battery comprised of 4 sets in series of 3 CR18650's in parallel...(3.7 volts) x 4 = 14.8 volts. I was constructing a 2800x3 = 8400MAH battery...WOOOO, the reserve!!!

SO...
I replaced all of the cells with 12 (filled in the blank spaces) 2800 MAH CR18650 cells bought from E=Bay.

The wiring was simple enough...space was a bit of a problem, but I got it all nicely in the case.
I temporarily taped the case together....to try it in the laptop...and VOILA!!!

Nothing.
Nada.
Zippo.

When I plug the battery in to the computer, it does recognize that a battery is there; it just isn't charging.
With the battery OUT of the laptop, there is NOT 14.8 volts (or a resonable amount) on any of the pins.
There IS 14.8 volts going in on the B+ pin on the protection circuit board.


SO...I read my face off...and lo and behold, discover that the small PCB in the battery case is not merely a voltage regulator, or charge controller, or anything else I had imagined it to be.
It does contain an EEPROM, and other circuits:

Renesas M61047FP Battery Protection Analog Front End (AFE) IC
M37517 Microprocessor...( marked thusly): M37517
F8024
3511a
SO...
Since my battery is outputting zero, I now have to assume that either the protection circuit board is duff, or that the EEPROM needs to be reset back to the original values.

I do NOT know the pinout of the HSTNN-UB02 Battery...it would help if I did, because then I'd know what the pins on the battery are as well.

I have the datasheet for the M61047FP Battery Protection circuit.
I could include it here, if anyone can help determine how to reset this thing from what was essentially, a power-down mode. The datasheet simply says that once a charger is detected by the circuit, a reset is sent to the microprocessor to get things back to "normal".

I also see that there are a few software programs out there that will "reset the EEPROM", but the one I looked at was a mere $179.......

Any ideas? Any help would be appreciated....largely!!!