‘Waste not, want not’ was another of my mother’s favourite maxims – one I have certainly taken to heart, as my wife will attest as I have fill our house and sheds up with all sorts of ‘mathoms’ – hobbit for ‘junk’.
I had two ‘dead’ laptop batteries which I probably ought to have binned or recycled but today (it was raining) I decided to dismantle them instead and stripped off the welded tabs. Each contained 6 x 18650 rechargeable lithium batteries.
Each cell was dead flat. After placing them in the single power bank I recommended here they (surprisingly) all came back ‘to life’.
Once they were charged up a bit I could put them in one of these four cell power banks where they came back to 100% – as you can see.
Each cell seems to be (about) a 2200mAh Samsung 18650 battery, so I have now got three 8800 mAh power banks for just the price of the cases ($6 in total). I have used one to charge three phones from flat then recharged it to 100% again, so they are going to work.
I used a pair of long nose snips to dismantle them, then a pair of pliers. Here is the process in pictures:
The empty power banks cost US1-2 each, so this is a big saving. Dead Teslas would have probably 1,000 or more of these things in them, but I’m sure you can find a dead rechargeable drill or robot vacuum cleaner battery etc lying around which has quite a few too, and maybe of better quality than these ones.
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