- Like many of you,
we've spent a lot of money on batteries over the years.
These Red bricks for our cameras, for example,
cost a whopping $350 a pop,
but that isn't even the biggest problem with them.
You see, even rechargeable lithium batteries
are consumable in a sense.
After a few years of regular use,
this guy right here gets us a whopping 20 minutes
of battery life.
And, that's on a good day,
which got us thinking the housing's still fine.
The battery management system, or BMS,
which handles charging and safety,
that's fine too.
So, would anything prevent us
from just swapping out the tired cells inside,
saving us some money
and keeping needless e-waste out of the landfill?
Well, you've already seen the title of the video.
So, I think you know the answer to that,
but what you don't know
is just how deep this twisted rabbit hole goes,
or who our sponsor is, iFixit,
though, in fairness,
you might have seen that one coming.
Is the battery in your device
not lasting as long as it used to?
Looking for a new project?
iFixit has you covered.
Stay tuned to the end of this video
to learn about their battery replacement kits.
(upbeat music)
Let's get this out of the way.
While we have dabbled in it before,
DIY battery repair can be very sketchy,
especially with lithium cells.
And, we would strongly recommend
leaving this sort of work to a professional,
but the difficulty of the work is only part of the problem.
Let me show you what I mean.
Most lithium based packs have three basic components,
a case to protect the sparky bits,
the pack itself made up of individual cells,
they are 18650s in this case,
and a battery management system or BMS.
The BMS is the brains of the whole operation,
monitoring and controlling the charge
and discharge rates of the connected cells.
Now, good ones will contain a host of safety features,
like overcharge protection, over current protection,
short circuit protection, and the like,
meaning that they act as your main line of defense
against catastrophic failure,
but they aren't the only one,
the second safety is built right into the cell itself
in the form of a pressure relief vent,
that it's right here on the positive terminal.
It's designed to vent the waste gas that's generated
by internal short circuits
that naturally occur as the cell ages.
This prevents the cell from pressurizing,
creating an explosion hazard.
You've probably experienced cell bulging
or expansion before
if you've got a really old laptop or phone.
It's a similar idea,
except that 18650s have rigid outer housing
which won't just puff up.
So, with all that outta the way, this doesn't look so hard.
Let's head to the shop.
(explosion in background)
Since our original intention
was to replace the cells inside
many of our aging battery packs,
not just make a video about it,
we snapped up this beast
of a 30 kilogram spot welder off of Craigslist
for about $150.
Seemed like a good investment,
but it didn't have the correct leads on it
for battery spot welding.
So, $70 worth of Amazon shopping later,
and we've got a pretty solid spot welder at our disposal.
We'll have a link down below to the leads that we used here,
and compared to our DIY lead acid battery spot welder,
so far, this is working a lot better.
Before we begin,
let's talk to safety precautions.
We've got our fire extinguisher,
though that's unlikely to do much of anything
with a lithium fire.
So, we've also got our fire safe workstation here,
with a fire brick
that we'll be doing our actual welding on,
gloves and tongs,
in case we actually need to handle a ruptured cell,
a sand bucket with additional sand
to dump over top of it,
our fume hood,
as well as a pre-propped door
for us to take that sand bucket and rip it outside,
in the event that we need to get rid of it.
Next up, let's talk about preparation for our pack,
because we have multiples of these Red battery packs,
we actually pre-disassembled one for you guys,
so that we can get going right away.
But, the process is simple.
You just want to de solder the leads
that run between the BMS and the battery pack itself,
which includes the power leads,
the balance charging leads,
which are these guys right here,
as well as this thermistor,
which is going to monitor the temperature of our pack,
assuming that we are able to actually reassemble it,
with the new BMS.
One other critical safety measure,
is disposal of our old cells.
We're gonna go ahead
and cover up all of the contacts
with something non-conductive,
like electrical tape and put it into our sand.
And, you might be thinking to yourself,
well, gee, Linus,
that pack probably only has one or two bad cells in it.
Why don't you just swap those out with good ones?
No, we don't do that.
We never ever do that.
There's lots of electrical engineering reasons not to do it.
Don't do it.
All new cells.
Of course, getting your hands on new cells
is not always the simplest thing ever.
And, you need to make sure
that you do your due diligence
to ensure that you're getting genuine cells
rather than counterfeit ones
which can have issues with reliability, capacity,
and safety.
We picked these up from a local vape shop
that we have enough of a relationship with to trust.
And, what Colin's doing is he's checking them,
not to make sure that they're genuine,
but rather to make sure
that they're all at a similar enough voltage
that when we go and spot weld them together,
they're not gonna suddenly (grunting)
equalize.
- Yeah, and it's good we did that,
'cause I found five cells that are low.
So, these 3.2 volts where everything else is 3.491.
- Depending on how long it's been sitting in inventory
it might have drained more or less.
And, we don't want that.
Our next order of business is to arrange the cells
in exactly the same orientation
before we spot weld them together.
And, there are a number of ways to do this.
You can get these little spacer kits off of Amazon.
But, unfortunately for us,
if we compare to our assembled pack,
these leave a space, as advertised,
and the original pack does not.
So, we might have to improvise a little bit,
if we want to try to fit our battery into the old housing.
One idea we had was to sacrifice one of our batteries
and use it as a kind of holder,
here we go,
for our new cells,
and then pop it out when we're done.
Maybe, cut it away while we spot weld it.
I don't know.
Another complication that we have to overcome
is that we are using generic nickel strips.
Whoop, there we are.
Make sure you're using genuine nickel by the way,
while Red is using obviously some precut ones
that look a little bit different.
What do you lean towards, Colin?
Using this boy as a holder?
- [Colin] I think we should snip it in half.
Yeah, that way we can solder the topside,
flip it over,
and solder the bottom side,
while still having support on both sides, so--
- I really like it.
Let's run it through the band saw.
(saw whirring)
So, these are all positive terminal up.
Boopity, boop, boop, boop.
Oh, this is gonna work okay.
I think what we're gonna--
(crosstalk)
We're gonna put them on and then yeah.
And, then we'll wrap them
and then I think we're in really great shape.
Colin was like, I don't think we're gonna fit this back
in the original housing.
And, I'm like, I wanna try.
My life's in your hands, Colin.
- [David] Actually,
all of our lives are in your hands, Linus.
- Alright. (grunting)
That's not good.
I'm kind of imagining that I hold this
and you wrap the tape.
There we go.
I have seen dumber things.
Now, at this point,
we could start laying down our nickel strips
and spot welding everything together,
but if we make even one mistake, we are, A,
evacuating this room,
and, B, starting our project completely from scratch.
So, we wanna go ahead and do some test welds.
Now, we got this all dialed in
for a single layer of nickel strip over a test cell.
By the way, shout out to the vape shop again
for giving us a bunch of testers here.
But, what we haven't tried is two layers.
So, I'm gonna play around with this a little bit
and see if we can get a nice clean spot weld
on some of our test cells here.
First spot weld,
there's a little bit of spring tension in this.
See, we want that spring to go down.
Then, we're gonna go ahead and...
It's definitely on there.
Let's grab another one and let's try two layers.
- [Colin] You should usually do two hits.
- Oh, I will. I will. I will.
Don't worry.
So, we're doing a weld heat of 690,
a ramp speed of three,
and we think this means 14 milliseconds.
Let's see how it handles two layers at our current setting.
- [Colin] I think it'll be fine.
- You know what?
I don't think we have to change anything, Colin.
Oh, no, it popped.
Okay.
- [Colin] Try again.
Just clean up the tip.
- Okay, whew.
- [Colin] Now, do that 32 more times.
- Okay, this is pretty sweet. (laughing)
I'm having fun.
Now, this is where things get a little bit interesting.
We're about to do our second layer.
Colin, you wanna have a look at this and see how it's going?
- [Colin] I need a clipboard so I can grade you.
- Yeah, thanks.
- [Colin] It looks like a battery pack.
- This is the part I'm most nervous about,
because we need to do four cells in a row,
and this is where we're first going to connect
positive and negative terminals.
So, this is where we find out how Colin's measurements went.
Hoping for no sparks.
No sparks, Colin.
- [Colin] Yay.
- You sound less enthusiastic than me.
Were you hoping for some sparks?
The thing about super high current
is that it doesn't just melt your nickel
and your cell together.
It also melts your tips if they're not great tips.
You know what?
Maybe, we won't have the link
to where to buy these down below there.
Really not that great.
- [Colin] Okay, great.
- I'd also like to take a moment
to point out that I'm a total amateur at this.
So, if you're looking
to actually build your own battery packs,
there are lots of other better resources out there.
(censoring beep)
- [Colin] Yep.
- That was a matter of time.
Ah, fudge.
Well, we popped one.
Ah, think I didn't clean the tip often enough.
Well, that was a bummer,
but the good news is the video's not over.
We had a backup plan,
because we knew going into this
that lithium batteries are much, much more volatile
than the nickel metal hydride batteries
that you might find in your parents' old power tools.
Not only are the cases much thinner,
which improves power density,
but makes them more susceptible to rupturing,
but the lithium inside them
is chemically much more reactive.
You guys have probably seen
the handful of videos on the news
of electric vehicles bursting into flames.
That's a lithium battery fire and it is no joke.
Not only are they essentially inextinguishable,
but the smoke they emit is toxic too.
We actually dumped more sand on that
and moved it away from the door next to the concrete wall.
There will be no fire there.
So, here is what our backup plan is.
Rather than trying to tackle a 16 cell pack,
we're gonna take
one of our our smaller Sony style batteries,
which has just four cells
and try to rebuild this one.
The silver lining in all this
is that now you guys get to see the entire process.
So, there you go.
We've pulled the housing off of the BMS here.
I'm sure all of the DIY e-bike battery folks are...
Have already left their comments.
Wow, they're using really pinner nickel strips on this.
Look at this.
The minimum possible amount of nickel was used.
- [Colin] Backup sand bins right here.
- Yeah, we got it?
Alright, thanks, Colin.
Anger level's so high right now.
(electrical zapping)
(metal clanging)
(censored beep)
Well, we're down to four matching cells.
So, this will be our last attempt.
Are you guys ready to go again?
- [David] Yeah,
I've got a good feeling about these batteries.
- What we need to check now
is if my leads are going to line up with the BMS though.
This guy is gonna go here and this guy is gonna go here.
So, I'm just gonna trim those down.
Here we go.
And, then, I'm gonna double check again
to make sure I snip off the right part.
I'm okay.
I'm okay, boys.
You know what?
Now's a good time to throw it into the housing then.
Tell me something, David.
- [David] Yep?
- Would you put this pack in a camera?
- [David] Do I own the camera or is it your camera?
- It's my camera
- Maybe.
(Linus and David chuckling)
- And, this is where we bunged it up last time.
(censored beep)
Do you believe?
- [David] I believe.
- [Colin] Sandpaper between.
- Yeah, you better believe it.
(metal scraping)
Two more strips.
And, then this one,
this last one here actually needs to be quite a bit longer.
Do we got this, guys?
Theoretically, that's it.
Where's the multi meter?
We should all see seven volts.
Here we go, boys.
- [Colin] Better have seven volts.
- 6.98, we're short.
(Colin groaning)
(Linus laughing)
Kidding, kidding, kidding.
I just wanna cut away this little square here.
Rats, I cut away more of it than I had meant to there.
Let's solder a wire to it.
(censored beep)
We had a mishap with our first BMS and the snips.
And, unfortunately, when I saw the spark,
I kind of jerked, and moved fast,
and I'm not sure whether the spark
was from shorting the battery or shorting the BMS.
So, we might have killed the BMS,
which means that
we had to go find another sacrificial battery,
which was also on its last legs anyway.
And, we are going to use that BMS.
So, I'm just gonna go ahead and solder that guy.
What do you think guys?
- [Colin] Much higher chance.
- Nothing.
This time, I'm surprised.
- [Colin] That's as good as you can get.
- Yeah, there's nothing...
We didn't do anything wrong this time.
- [Colin] Check the pack voltage.
- [Linus] Battery.
- [Colin] Seven volts.
- All that means is that these pads
are definitely connected.
Please, tell me this is a cheap light.
- [David] It's a monitor. It's not cheap.
- Oh, it's a... (gasping)
That's it.
This time, I'm sure we did everything right.
The pack is assembled correctly.
The BMS was went straight out of a working one onto ours.
I am really surprised this didn't work.
Actually, point of clarification, I'm furious,
but not surprised.
Let's talk about that.
We discovered in our initial research for this project,
that even if we had successfully welded together a battery
for this Red brick,
it wouldn't have come back to life.
And, the reason for that
is because battery manufacturers are (censored beep) us.
There are multiple tiers of anti right to repair behavior.
One of the simplest is mechanical obstruction,
where manufacturers use brittle plastic, glue,
single use fasteners,
and other similar strategies
to make repairing their devices impractical.
Sometimes this is just plain not caring
about the user or the environment,
while other times,
this happens for malicious reasons,
like planned obsolescence.
Either way, I promise neither of them
will ever happen with our merch from lttstore.com.
Get yours today.
The next tier of anti right to repair behavior
is soft obstruction.
This is almost always on purpose
and exists solely to prevent end users and third parties
from repairing or rejuvenating their devices,
with manufacturers often citing safety as a justification.
That is what we ran into with,
well, would've run into with our Red pack
and appears to be what we ran into with our other pack.
But, how are they doing that?
Well, there are four different types of BMS,
dumb, basic, smart, and evil.
Dumb is no BMS at all,
like these RC lipo batteries,
each cell's voltage is maintained at the time of recharging
by a much more sophisticated battery charger
using the balance lead.
A basic BMS allows you to safely use
and charge the battery pack with a simple charger,
while protecting against under and over current situations.
So, a lot better than nothing.
A smart BMS will include cell balancing
and some level of capacity learning,
along with self resetting for faults,
and, ideally, the ability to resell,
no, not like on Facebook marketplace,
to replace the cells
like we attempted today.
Finally, there's evil BMSs,
which thankfully we don't see that much of these days.
What makes them evil
is that after a set number of charge cycles,
they will switch off permanently,
even if they could still work.
And, if you, as a manufacturer,
ever built this sort of intentional e-waste,
shame on you.
All of which raises some questions then.
What exactly did we see today?
According to Tyler from THTbattery.com,
Red batteries,
at least these older Red bricks,
are extremely challenging to re-cell,
because there's a good chance
the BMS will simply not wake up after the operation.
He hasn't put the R&D into solving the problem,
'cause there just haven't been enough requests,
but there are a couple possible explanations for this.
The malicious one is that Red's contract manufacturer
could be using software
to detect either cell disconnection
or a change in capacity
that will shut down the BMS on purpose.
In which case, it's basically an evil one,
for all intents and purposes.
The good news is that replacing the BMS
with a generic one for about $17
could get you back up and running,
if you don't need the original indicator lights,
or anything like that.
The careless possibility is that they used volatile storage
for the BMS's programming that wipes itself,
if it loses power.
Given the cost difference,
this honestly could also be considered
a malicious design decision.
Now, something that I wanna make clear at this stage
is that I am not advocating
for user serviceable battery packs,
considering the precision required for safe assembly
and the volatility of the chemistry,
that's just not realistic,
as we observe today.
But, there's a middle ground here.
Ah, yes, this pack is made by a company called bebob,
a German battery manufacturer
that just so happens to supply
one of the largest cinema camera makers in the world, ARRI.
They advertise their cells to be replaceable
and they even have an indicator
that tells you when you've reached 80 and 60%
of the original capacity.
When that happens,
you can send it to them and they will replace the cells
at a discount.
Other cinema brands, take notes.
We're not even asking you to be as awesome as bebob,
but the least you can do
is not put up roadblocks on purpose.
So, then, the safest way that you can help right now
is just returning your batteries to be recycled
when you're done with them.
But, in an increasingly electrified world,
producers of battery powered devices
have a responsibility to plan ahead.
and to extend the lifespan of their products.
and figure out what's supposed to happen to them
when they reach the end of their life.
On that note, as it turns out,
one of the largest battery recycling facilities
in North America,
RETRIEV Technologies,
is just a few hours away from us.
So, let us know in the comments
if you want us to go check out how it's done in person
and get subscribed,
so you don't miss it.
And, don't miss our sponsor, iFixit.
iFixit wants to help you keep your new devices powered up,
like when they were new.
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe you'll enjoy our other
this should be a legal video,
where manufacturers were caught swapping components on SSDs,
effectively advertising one thing and delivering another.