Tuesday, December 31, 2013

RYOBI BAD BATTERY REPAIRED

IMPORTANT: Playing with Li-Ion batteries can be dangerous! Make sure you know what you are doing before doing it and be VERY CAUTIOUS. I can't stress it enough. I won't be held liable for the info in this post. You better know what you are doing, or not doit at all.
Sooooooo
My father in law got a Ryobi tool case with a variety of Li-Ion battery powered tools. Its mostly a hobby tool case rather than a profesional one, but nevertheless when you buy something you expect it to work out of the box.
Well one of the two included batteries didn't. One worked fine as it should, but the second one would not charge. It would show an error during charging and that would be it.
The shop we bought it from told me to put the battery on a bigger charger and let it for a little time to see if it might fix the issue. After some time I managed to use an 18V charger rather than the 12V it came with and left it charge for a bit. The battery however didn't repair itself. At the time, I didn't have a multimeter to test it, and was left and forgotten on a shelf waiting for someone to call the shop and replace it. Nobody did.
In the mean time I had take apart a few Laptop Li-Ion batteries and with a Li-Ion 18650 charger from DX.com, I managed to salvage quite a few 18650 cells. And then ti dawned me, I could probably repair the RYOBI battery if the fault was within the cells. And I took it apart.
I also got a cheap multimeter, opened the battery and measured each cell.
The first had a healthy (?) 2.9 volts while the other two, had about 0.2 and 0.6volts. HOLLY MOTHER OF GOD a new battery with 2 dead cells. Damn. A close look revealed something that it looked like one of the cells had leaked ?!? (I don't even know if thats possible)








In any case I took it apart, soldered 3 "new" cells and the battery worked like a charm afterwards. Perhaps I shouldnt bother and demand a replacement but it wsa fun to do that. Hopefully we will not suffer any explosive results.

Again be VERY CAREFULL when dealing with Li-Ion batteries. Can be very dangerous when overheated and explode in your face. You have been warned. 

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