From: Alan King (Alan_at_nc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Dec 10 2001 - 21:43:10 EST
Ray Bayles wrote:
> It is still a mystery to me why no company has come out with a battery
> rebuilding service... They are available for Compaq and Toshiba
This is often not economically viable. By the time you buy the
batteries, put them in, and try to make a little money as a business, it
costs as much as just building a new battery or even more. It's harder
to crack open a glued case without significant damage than to take two
new parts and glue them in the first place. Well, more time consuming
anyway..
But, if you can solder and consider your spare time required cheaper
than the extra $100+:
Actually anyone on here that can solder reasonably well can repair
their own easily enough, it's pretty easy to solder to a battery
terminal when you know how, I make my own packs all the time. I've
thought about doing them myself for a 'real' price, like $60-$80, but I
have too many other things going on for now..
Get some consumer grade D cells, the ones that are light weight and
really a C cell with a D size package around it. The bottom isn't
really the bottom of the cell, so you can practice soldering on it with
a bit more ease since you're not directly heating a battery. Old dead D
cells are great to practice on. First, just try and solder a wire on a
raw cell bottom terminal. Takes forever, and usually you can pull the
wire back off by hand, all the solder popping off the terminal. Then,
go to Ace Hardware and get the little white bottle of acid flux for $3
or $4. Put a drop of that on the terminal, thin drop is best, and
solder to that. You'll hear a sizzle, when that stops the solder is
stuck. Do not heat the terminal first, like you normally solder, tin
the wire and get the extra solder you need on the iron first, then set
it all down on the acid flux drop. Or, you can put on the flux, then
get a solder blob on the iron, and put that solder on the terminal first
and let it cool, just a small thin solder blob though. Once cool again,
then tin the wire and get a little extra solder, and press that into the
solder on the terminal. Either way, your iron shouldn't touch the
battery terminal for more than a few seconds. With a little practice
you can do it well enough that pulling the wire rips the wire out of the
solder instead of pulling the solder off the cell, or you rip off the
terminal plating, either way it was stuck pretty good and wouldn't have
come off without some pulling. Then you know how to solder to a
battery, just get replacement cells and solder them in exactly as the
originals, expect around $30 or so for a set of most laptop type
batteries, and finding the blank cells can be difficult for some sizes.
Of course use eye protection and I take no responsibility for it if
you try it, do it on the other side of a sheet of plexiglass to be sure,
etc. But my iron only touches the battery for a few seconds, the
terminal surface is barely warm when done (I often touch it immediatly
after removing the iron to keep in practice and make sure I'm still
doing it right..), the rest of the battery stays cold. You must do it
with as little heat and as fast as possible, so you don't melt the nylon
vent seals on the other side of the terminal surface. I thought the guy
was nuts when I first saw this, but it only takes doing a few to realize
that it's mostly uninformed people and manufacturers covering their
asses that say you can't solder to batteries, because of course you'll
get people who can't even really solder doing it and holding the iron on
forever and blowing a battery up in their face or something similar.
I've done hundreds to thousands of batteries, and never had any
apprehension after seeing it done and doing that first few and playing
around with it a bit. I did 50 or 100 per day at times, in a small
production environment, and it just plain works. Might be a good idea
to take a little water and baking soda and wash and dry the terminal
when done, to neutralize the acid. Of course not much and don't short
the cell. Also don't short the cell with wire either, once you attach
wires coming off the side it is much easier to short the cell
accidently.
This of course does not 'reset' any data stored in the battery chip
that many laptop batteries have, a few may still not charge if the
battery chip says "it's a dead battery". If you run into one of these
then let me know, most of them are easy enough to read out. Then the
worst case would be to have to get one unused battery to see the
'unused' data needed, if I couldn't figure out the counters to reset
just from looking at the data. Most of the TP batteries I've done just
work with new batteries though, worst case is normally just do a
discharge/recharge cycle to reset the charge indicator, just like any
other time it get's messed up.
Alan
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