Disclaimer:
Lithium batteries can be very dangerous, there is risk of fire or explosions if you don t use them in the right way . In case of fire, don' t use water to estinguish them.
I successfully re-celled a t420/t430 70+ six cell battery.
Few months ago I read this post explaining how to replace battery cells in a Lenovo battery. The process seemed to me risky because, as described, if you cut current to battery the internal circuit will brick it.
Luckily, I discovered this procedure to jump start a dead battery, and tested on a 55+ and a 70+ LG batteries, it works.
Difficults part of recelling are opening the battery enclosure -without destroying it - and solder batteries to create battery pack.
To open the battery I suggest to use force to this points ( tha back and connector ) and then open with hands. Consider that this is a lg model, battery enclosure of sanyo' s one is slightly different.
To solder, it' s better for safety purpose to spot weld battery pack as in hackaday post. I cannot proceed this way due to lack of a spot welder, so I welded it with a normal tin-lead welder and some copper wires.
As for the choice of cells, after an evaluation of all possibilities, I choose Panasonic ncr18650b because of the top level capacity at a low price ( ~10 euro for a 2 pack ).
Conclusions atm:
Pros:
Higher capacity (~10%), higher lifespan of the battery ( because of laptop voltage cutoff you use only a part of design capacity ), cheaper than buy an original one - especially for 9 cells batteries -
Cons:
Not so easy to do, need of windows to recalibrate.
I will soon update this post with a lot of more useful details that I learned during study and realization of the recelling.
Lithium batteries can be very dangerous, there is risk of fire or explosions if you don t use them in the right way . In case of fire, don' t use water to estinguish them.
I successfully re-celled a t420/t430 70+ six cell battery.
Few months ago I read this post explaining how to replace battery cells in a Lenovo battery. The process seemed to me risky because, as described, if you cut current to battery the internal circuit will brick it.
Luckily, I discovered this procedure to jump start a dead battery, and tested on a 55+ and a 70+ LG batteries, it works.
Difficults part of recelling are opening the battery enclosure -without destroying it - and solder batteries to create battery pack.
To open the battery I suggest to use force to this points ( tha back and connector ) and then open with hands. Consider that this is a lg model, battery enclosure of sanyo' s one is slightly different.
To solder, it' s better for safety purpose to spot weld battery pack as in hackaday post. I cannot proceed this way due to lack of a spot welder, so I welded it with a normal tin-lead welder and some copper wires.
As for the choice of cells, after an evaluation of all possibilities, I choose Panasonic ncr18650b because of the top level capacity at a low price ( ~10 euro for a 2 pack ).
Conclusions atm:
Pros:
Higher capacity (~10%), higher lifespan of the battery ( because of laptop voltage cutoff you use only a part of design capacity ), cheaper than buy an original one - especially for 9 cells batteries -
Cons:
Not so easy to do, need of windows to recalibrate.
I will soon update this post with a lot of more useful details that I learned during study and realization of the recelling.
