Thank you for the awesome battery talk broh! BTW he's not bouncing, he's just vibrating at a higher frequency.

Your videos rapidly becoming my go to guy when it comes to anything about electric vehicles, I'm only trying to sort out a battery for electric bike but I've learnt a lot from your videos so thanks.

Note: do not chuck dead batteries into the trash. Recycle them please.

Damn.. I hate to be one who seems to not be paying attention to the message but, I think your dogs had a "moment" behind your back. Anyway, you're still the man.

Dear Jehu, You teaching skills are brilliant and easy to understand, You are a great mentor to us in you tube land!! Thank you for all your tutorials. Bruce the swimmer NEW ROCHELLE N.Y.

Wish I had known this battery knowledge a few years ago, as I was an IT guy and used to collect piles of dead laptop battery packs for recycling. I was familiar with idea that the entire pack wasn’t bad that it was probably just one or two cells. What got me I was still afraid of blowing up a lithium battery trying to charge it now. Never realized how much useful power I was loosing. Price was right! What beats free!

DUDE! Love the dogs hiding behind you humping. LOL!!!

The 300 mili amp was the number I needed. Charge with 300ma and if they are warm chuck them. That is definitely step 1 in my routine.

Great Video!!! Thank you for your continued support of all things electric! Check out hydrogen stored in a metal hydride matrix, you can make hydrogen from water, and then store as a gas in a metal hydride matrix (metal molecule) at low pressures without the danger of high psi storage. Good luck and God bless

Bouncing video !!! Shake it baby, shake it !!

Thank you so much. I bought a whole bunch and I was doing one at a time charging and discharging. I never thought about putting 16 together and just charging them.

Another thing you can do is measure the voltage straight out of the casing. Depending on the source of your cells and whether they have protection circuits on the cells themselves you can 'bin' cells below about 2.3v as a low priority for testing as they have a higher chance for self-discharge and low capacity whether through age or internal shorts.

Hey, I've got a time- saving idea for you. (It's pretty simple and maybe someone else has mentioned it, but I didn't see it in the comments.) Get a FLIR (infrared camera) and look at the batteries when you're first charging them. You'll be able to see which ones are heating up early- on and know to eliminate them quickly. Good video, BTW...

Back in the day before automatic chargers that cycle, analyze and charge them for you. It is still work but not as much. Take Care, John

fairly quick way to eliminate bad cells is testing internal resistance. IMAX B6AC V2 can do it. one cell test will take 5 sec. If the resistance is ok, then next you can check capacity. Thx for video.

3:25 fan magically comes on.

Ive been using the foxnovo charger, it will capacity test 4 at a time at .5 or 1 amp. I also precharge 20 at a time with 20 of the tp4056's with a computer power supply because if you parallel them like you are doing (imo), a higher voltage battery/batteries will send its available amperage to a lower cell and the c rating could be maxed out. Love your videos

This is actually pretty dangerous advice to put 16 cells parallel in a charger without testing them with multimeter for voltage first... if they are not at the same voltage they can get very hot very quickly without even connecting a charger to it as the highest cell will try to charge the lowest.. You should always measure the voltage if you have random unknown cells.

1minute and 10 seconds, you will see two dogs trying to bang and the bottom dog is like YO YO were on camera CUT the shi* LMAO

Some pretty good info there, & love the Samba & Powerwall projects!!! Here's some generalized "safe handling practices" for pulling used cells from packs: 1. after pulling from battery pack, measure cell voltage. if it's less than 2.5v, toss or recycle 2. charge the cell. if it gets hot during charging, toss or recycle 3. measure cell voltage 5 minutes off the charger. Less than 4.1V toss or recycle 4. wait 30 minutes - 1 hour & measure again if it's fallen below 4V toss or recycle, otherwise record voltage 5. store cell for 1 - 2 weeks, check & record voltage, if cell voltage has fallen more than .1v from previous recorded voltage, toss or recycle. 6. store cell for 2 months, check & record voltage, if cell voltage has fallen more than .1v from previous recorded voltage, toss or recycle. Any batteries passing the above can be basically considered "good cells", but I would go one step further & run a complete 1A discharge / charge cycle on them to see if they can handle a decent drain & rapid charge, if they handled the low charge without getting warm but heat up quickly on fast charge, or get really hot at 1A discharge, I would not trust them. Also, for charging / discharging / testing I prefer the Opus BT-C3100 V2.2 for a few reasons. Yes it's more expensive, but the Imax B6 is widely counterfeited & the counterfeit ones can cause serious problems including fire. C3100 has 4 completely independent channels. User selectable options include Charge, Discharge, Refresh, Cycle Test, Quick Test. Quick Test IMO should be done on all cells that pass #1 above before proceeding to #2. This shows you the internal resistance of the cell being tested. Any Cells >500 internal resistance = toss or recycle. My cells with half original capacity are between 200-300. The cells I had that went over 500 did get hot during charging. Any "good" cells that had been siting for several years can be run through the "refresh" cycle to potentially recover lost capacity & reduce self discharge. True, you can manually "refresh" with any charger, but the Opus does it without stopping restarting each cycle. True, you can only charge 4 cells at a time within the charger, but you can also discharge 4 cells at the same time. Also, you could probably rig up those 4-cell holders to run one in each slot & still charge 16 cells at 250mA per cell (1000mA charge / 4 cells) at the same time.... Charge rates for the C3100 = 200mA, 300mA, 500mA, 700mA, 1000mA, 1500mA, 2000mA Discharge rates for the C3100 = 200mA, 300mA, 500mA, 700mA, 1000mA Unfortunately, the Opus does not handle LiFePO4's :(

This is pretty cool. I'm just a little worried about putting batteries with different voltages in parallel.

I've been watching your videos primarily on cells in general. Because of you I'm alot more knowledgeable in the world that is batteries. Watched this video more than I've watched all the Harry Potter movies.

Hi +jehugarcia I have been watching your videos for a while now and find them interesting and well presented. I have just started harvesting batteries and thank you for your tips! It started really good but then I got a few older battery packs and have found a few that have got quite hot (charging at only 500ma, scary to think what would have happened at 1amp) I have also found that if one cell gets hot then all the other cells from the pack will do the same, I now just get rid of the entire pack without testing, just easier to dispose of them all rather then risking a fire.

Sometime I charge a cell from 0V and gets heat at first but once the charge rise for a few minutes, perhaps 20-40min, then the temperature decrease and charge fine and cold. I use to charge the cells that holders and tp4056 for each slot

Build a dummy load out of cheap incandescent lamps. A 6 Volt lamp of suitable wattage would be an ideal long life resistive load for a single cell. (I'll be using 3 banks of 3 12V 22W festoons for a braking load of 200W on my e-bike.) Get fancy: Use a dual filament brake/tail lamp plus a toggle switch for a high and low discharge mode. Bank several of the above modules together, each connected to a common busbar on one side, and via a pair of toggle switches to two separate busbars, one for the batteries the other the loads. A link between the unconnected poles of the switches allows the sub-assembly to discharge a single cell in isolation. Now you can assemble a module of 5, 10, (as many as you care to build for) cells and test their individual and/or collective behaviour before you commit to soldering a single cell. I think you should be able to see how pretty much any load you desire can be set with the right choice of toggle settings. One final trick to bring it all together. 200 mm of 9AWG has a voltage drop of exactly 1 mV per Ampere. Voila, instant 100 Ampere shunt from the scrap bin. 300mm of 17 AWG (1 mm2) has a voltage drop of 10 mV per Ampere. A workable length for for a high precision shunt to measure the in situ behaviour of each individual cell while the whole bank is under load. Interface the whole shebang to an Arduino and a PC and you can effortlessly create and keep a detailed record of the charge and discharge profiles of a large number of cells under a wide variety of charge and load conditions. Actually a little 8 pin PIC chip would sit nicely across each cell, constantly measuring its voltage and current, and pass the data onto a more capable chip to be then passed onto a PC. Remember. because we have lots of floating rails, opto isolators are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to interface the individual cell monitors to the master processor. Since we've got the reference design already. Why not put a current and voltage sensing module built around a PIC micro-controller or similar, into every bank of cells from now on?

I love how clearly you explain things in detail. I do like Rinoa, the problem with him (her?) is that quite often they's not much explaining... And I haven't seen much replying to questions in his vids. Thanks man, subbed.

Guys please DON'T TAKE ADVICE from this man. Connecting totally random, charged, discharged and damaged cells together in parallel is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. You could burn your house down. Firstly, current will flow from the most charged to the discharged or shorted cells without any restriction and regulation. Secondly, the current form the charger won't be divided equally, because the cells are in a different condition. Some cells migh be hugely overcharged. Please upvote this comment to make it more visible.

I am here to watch and learn and I thank you for making all these series of videos,

I bought my mom an old wireless speaker that had 2x18650 in it. Looking at the speaker's manual, I found the battery life to be pretty weak. I couldn't find 18650s at a reasonable price around so I ordered a brand new 6 cells (Dr. power, Mr. batt or something...) laptop battery from amazon for 25$. I disassembled it and rewired them in a 2s3p configuration. I don't know much about batteries and all of that but I heard you had to have matching cells to make a battery pack. The 6 cells came from the same battery pack so I guess no problem there. As there was room in the device for 4 additional batteries they all went in and there you go, almost tripled battery life.

Did you say toss the bad battery as in throw away? I always thought lithium ion batteries had a pretty good recycling process. After all, all the chemicals you need to make a good battery from a bad one are there, they just need to be re-processed. Thank you for the videos though. I'm learning a lot.

Your the man. I'm learning a lot from these videos!

excelent procedure.. another way is assemble a battery suport with a resistors for made 1 amp discharge and a one cell BMS and conect a analogic clock on the outlet of bms and check the time until time stops.. the time is relative to amp discharge. You can made many ot theese devices and dircharge test will be quickly.. Sorry for my bad english

You may be surprised if you put a discharged and charged cell in parallel to the charger (connected in parallel as you show)

I sure wouldn't put 16 batteries in holders connecting them in parallel without first making sure that they were all at about the same voltage!

Thanks man. Been a subscriber since just before 30k. Awesome to see you almost hitting 100k! This video helped me with my e bike build.

hey J , ya need a lab coat and a big workbench with test tubes and beakers and erlenmeyer flasks with some old racks of equipment outa submarines like the seaview and scopes with waveforms , maybe a jacobs ladder to the side just for good measure ....prop man , prop man

Nice tips put this on save and watch from time to time.

Damn , I love your tips . I am building a E chopper made from scrap from pipes . now I am building pack for it .

This was so helpful thanks for the great information. I get restless legs too and sometimes bounce my leg so I can relate and all the negative comments I see about it make me mad.

Hey Mr G thanks for the vids.. lott a time to devote to on basically a voluntary basis. nice content . smart dude. anyhow, do you remember the old packs we used to make to run our RC cars in the 80's and 90's? Team Losi, Team Associated, RC10L.. The JRxPro! ... they all used to run on 7.2V Sanyo NiCad and If I recall it was a stretch to have a pack be more than 1400. The hump packs were like 1700Mah. Remember they were SCR and SCE? I still to this day have a Victor Engeneering VicPro Sr. battery charger. It had the key pad, took an external power supply and was used to basically do what the IMAX does today. I rememerber Reedy, Tekin and Novak were big names back then. I was in 7th/8th grade when I was building an racing those things. To this day I still have the Original Tamiya Frog!

Jehu's bounce rate is synced with the rotating fan light..... nevertheless a very good and informative video , many thanks!

That sounds very methodical, and that is a very good thing. But damn, also very time consuming.

NIce video. I wish I had as good of luck finding good cells. I've got access to used laptop batteries (mostly dell - 4-6 years old) and I'm not having good luck finding anything above 1500Mah. I've got a bunch that are 700Mah or below, and the "good" ones are always 12-1300 mah. Most of these cells spent their life fully charged in laptops that just sat on desks turned on 24/7 so they've had the worst possible life. Keep it up, I love your work!

I wonder how accurate those 4 button chargers capacity measurements really are... it can't be that precise considering the price.

Just to point out, the charger would be charging at 300mA, not 300mA/hr. Current is already the measure of the flow of charge, so it doesnt need to be 'per hour'.

Starting my trailblazing with batteries. The first reason for even entering this arena is ebike pack failure. Once I have that project repaired will move on to set up some battery packs for 110v home use. That is a long way off as I am just starting.

Jehu. I'd like to hear your take on how these cells go bad. Why they go bad. How to prevent them from going bad. My theory is that if these cells were in a vacuum at a consistent passive connetic temperature...

you are the best on youtube for answers...i have problems with some 16850 discharging errors the amphours are so low want discharge...how do you fix them so you can use them.. they charge ok ...thanks carl

Thanks for the education! Good info for us electronically challenged!

I picked up one of those units and was saddened when I tried discharging 4s4p total of 16 cells it took four separate restarts over three day period due to the time reset built into the charger. Not sure if this happens in the charge mode will be testing that when the discharge completes, hopefully, today.

Awesome information my good friend. Looking forward to the next tutorial. Have an amazing day.

This video gave me an idea how to charge alot of cells at one time, before I been using the opus btc3100 and foxnovo 4s, to charge and test the cells. Both will measure the capacity. The opus can charge and discharge at 1 amp, the foxnovo can charge at 1 amp and discharge at 500 ma . Now I can just use those 2 chargers to test the capacitys. Either way it take hours to test them, but having a seperate way to charge them speeds up the process. I built a 3s battery pack with 168 batteries (94 amp hour). As long as you carefully choose your cells when you build it to be as close to perfect balance, the entire battery will stay in balance on its on. I use cells as low as 1100 mah and as high as 2500 mah to build the pack, so far so good. Like they said on the video, any cell that loses capacity after sitting for 3 hours, dont use them. If you use those cells, the battery pack will not stay in balance and will not fully charge. I recommend stay away from the power tool 18650, I bought 50 of those high drain ryobi cells, All measure 0 volts, about 6 of them had venting damage, the 20 cells I revived were average 700 mah capacity. It was a waste of money.

Next time you male a video where you're showing a particular product and holding it by the camera either provide a link in the description to the exact product or hold it still please it's hard to read when you're wiggling it! So good video thanks for the info broski

It looks like the Imax balance changer that is shown in this video is one of those Chinese clones. But the link he shares where to get one is directing us to a Skyrc Imax original one though.

Sir I have purchased 18650 battery capacity tester module but when I tested the same 18650 cell Everytime after charging it full then it showed wrong reading of the same cell. 1st time reading was :168mah 2nd time 95 mAh 3rd time 125 mAh 4th time 76 mAh Why it showed wrong reading for the same cell as I charged it Everytime full for capacity testing. Regards

I bought the charger but when I connect up an 18650 it says connection break... after some research I've concluded it's because there's no balance leads ??? But I didn't see you having any what's the solution?

Did anyone else notice the doggy quickie behind him at about the 1:08 mark through 1:15? 😁😁😁

To run a house, you need a giant power wall. Let's assume you use gas oven, you use gas heating etc. But, let's assume that things requiring power in your home are the TV, Fridge, Microwave, Toaster, Electric blanket, lights, computer etc. Now assume it's charged with solar, but there is no solar of a night, assume it's winter and you use the electric blanket all night, you use the Microwave 2 times in the night for a total of 6 minutes, you look at the TV for 6 hours, your fridge is running, and you are charging your phone or something and a couple of LED lights are on. The total power required over this night, would be nearly 2kWh. Now let's say your power bank it's built up of 2Ah 18650's, it would require literally 270 cells to make the battery with a 2kWh output. But of course you have to make the battery larger than that, because it would be ridiculous to have the battery's maximum output be just your average night, you would end up with the power cutting out on various nights, so you would realistically have to build a 3kWh battery to be realistic, which means 405 cells. And with cells being around 42 grams or so per weight, this means the huge battery you make is going to be a mammoth 17kg battery. If you can gain each cell for only 1 dollar each, or even 1.5 dollars each, certainly this is still all worth it. But if you can only get them for 2 dollars each, you are better off just buying large lead acid deep cycle batteries for your purposes.

You are an inspiration jehugarcia ,to me and to lot's of other people

Much appreciated. TQ. Your link line number six is missing. And also line number 5- It only goes to ebay home site.

Thanks for making this video. How long does it take to discharge a cell, how often do you have to swap the cell out to test the next one?

Can u combine different cels like 2000mah and 3000mah different Brands With charging ?

Great tip. Cheers from Brazil

Thanks for the advice. Im using that 'imax b6' to test some liitokala batteries. (suposed to be 3000mAh) Trying to make a bat for my ebike. Need 48v for the motor, and the best amp for the autonomy

bloody hell this is a long process. weeks and weeks. I just want a way to instantly tell if a battery is likely good or bad.

Wouldn't it be nice if the casing for the batttery pack (or its lining) is also a charging/testing station? You'd test hundreds or thousands at a time. You'd buy 18650 (dis)charge modular wiring with LED's that flicker/discolor to report individual battery health. Or if you had a giant testing rig, you could rent it out to those wanting to save time. Within hours they'd know which cells to toss. Taking self discharge readings can be done quite quickly as you described.

lmao I thought his dogs were fuckin in the background for a sec

Hola Jehu excelente video como siempre, me di cuenta que el cargador que enseñas en el video tiene solo un display y el link que pusiste para Amazon muestra un cargador con 2 displays, me podrias aclarar cual comprar, tal vez lo actualizaste a uno mas moderno o algo, gracias y excelente video lleno de informacion util muy bien explicado, buen dia

wouldn't it be a good idea to check each cell for continuity first? That should let you know if there is a short correct?

You are a cool guy. Your channel is very nice. If many guys are like you, the whole world would ve been long done with energy crisis. Thumb up.

There is a lot of very useful and excellent information that you have shared with us! Thank you very much! Regards. Steve.

Using this battery holder and the rc charger can br able to balance charger the batteries?

II started doing a very very similar process a couple years ago after I found a reliable source for hundreds of dead laptop cells.

Can a 16 power bank ..5v output 20000mah runing ebike perfectly?..note power bank shood be in series connexion ..it's mean 60v 20000mah . thanks

What happens when I make a 4 battery power pack with one cell the has much lower mAh than the other three? say 2500, 2500, 2500, 1300 mAh (used Samsung26f). Is the pack better off with just the 3 higher preforming cells? The internal resistance was measured about 20-25 for the good three and 51 for the lower mAh cell (by the lii-500, I know, just an estimation). Voltage seems fine in all of them, no excess heat during charge/discharge. Thanks in advance for any input!

Not sure if this really matters in the long run safety wise. Those cells might be okay today, but may short in a year's time from now. You always need that BMS imo

Do these batteries need to he dischsrged before storing?

tnx best regards from Ljubljana Slovenia

Thanks for the procedure and the details Jehu.

Jehu can’t thank you enough! man your awsome!

i use imax b6 v2 6a version 16cells charges from 2v to 4.2v in 2days in fast charging dont leave over night if u do that but it charges SLOOOOW in first time cause of 1 or 2v left over dicharge it with baterry tester board then u gst all tested then charge it all 16 with imax it will go faster discharger will drain it to 3v but charging will be 2x faster from that point

What's th maximum voltage difference between cells in the holders? Also what is the maximum capacity difference in series?

You will only be charging at 300ma per cell if they are all at the same charge level. If most of them are already at a near full charge, the ones that aren't will be drawing a much higher current and will get warm.

wow... do you have a temperature activated ceiling fan? just turned on all of a sudden during you video! nice!

Forgot to mention the name of the device. How is it called and where to get it?

Dear Friend, what mean when put probe on 18650 in continuity mode and sounds with "OL" on display written. The voltage is nominal 4.2 about Thank you very much

really good info here, Ive been looking for a video that goes into the procedure in more detail.

I don't think you mention that the Imax B6 charger you can also buy the thermal sensor accessory for it to also keep a measure of the battery temp, then it really is a All-in-One charger with full data...

im charging 16 taking out bad then testing caoacity with discarger board then charging again cause u see if some more get hot and plus if u charge 16 u leave it for next day u will see if its go to 3 2 or 0v

i recommend you get a few of these Foxnovo F-4S charger this can charge and discharge 4 cells and it will give you the mah after Hope this helps.

Dear Jehu, Have you heard of the company ToolkitRC www.toolkitrc.com they have a model called the M8. It is a newer product than this sky rc charger...and has a design advantage it uses two cooling fans and is only around $28 USD.. (You can also take it apart if you wish and throw on some better thermal paste underneath the heat sink) it can then balance charge 8S running at a cool 35 degrees Celsius (unlike those sky rc which get really hot even at 5A charge rate) the Toolkit RC because of their dual fan exhaust design can handle higher temperatures and it can output up to 15 amps of power.. you can choose if you want to use the balance leads or not... I guess that means.. Since you're such a busy guy you could 300mah charge up to 50 cells using just one M8 unit...using an external power supply with a max output of 15amps to provide the charging unit that suits your needs?... there aren't any fake units that I've seen so far... and you can do a balance charge up to 8S...for smaller tests... the only downside is that it doesn't show capacitance level per cell after a discharge cycle.... I was hoping you could use your popularity with this channel to convince the company to implement this idea of showing capacitance per cell on the discharge cycle (if you use their 8S balance mode to discharge each cell) I think their focus is mainly on the RC world where balancing is necessary but not necessarily determining the capacitance of each individual cell in the series... thanks for reading

Did you notice that you're bouncing in this video?

he's trying to vibrate so he can travel across the multiverse to Earth Prime

Instead of using this holders for four batteries, can I use eight individual holders and connect them to a protoboard in parallel and then connect the charger?

only thing id of added is..when you said you would maybe use 1,500mAh cells for less critical applications and 2,000 for something demanding... what capacity is the cell rated for that you are talking about? or does its initial capacity when new not matter and those capacities are just what u want to go off of regardless of their initial caps?

This video is full of great info! Thanks for taking the time to explain.

What about measuring internal resistance?

Thanks for information your a wealth of insight keep making more videos

16 cells of random voltages and random capacity, all connected in paralel? I think this is very bad idea.

Brilliant clear understandable makes sense thanks very much ' Shane uk