Bottle Battery Cells

alemanyorks

Pedelecer
Jun 16, 2011
40
-1
I was just tightening up a connection to the 36v 9ah battery(advertised) & took these shots, can anyone shed some light on the type of cells these are & if they are quality ones or not. It seemed to be arranged in three layers 10 cells round + possibly 2 in the centre(couldn't quite see). What wiring config could that be? Has anyone re-celled a setup like this?
Thanks for info you can give.


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Jeremy

Esteemed Pedelecer
Oct 25, 2007
1,010
3
Salisbury
They are 18650 size laptop cells, fairly low maximum discharge rate and fairly high internal resistance, but compact and light for the nominal capacity. The best are probably the Panasonic/Sanyo cells, at around 3Ah or so each, but even those suffer badly from their high internal resistance, so aren't great in terms of overall battery efficiency.

They work OK on a low power ebike though, as long as the maximum current is kept to no more than about 1.5 times the Ah capacity of the battery pack.
 
D

Deleted member 4366

Guest
There should be 40 cells in a 10S4P configuration. They'll be 3.7v (4.2v max) and 2200maH capacity each to give 37v 8.8aH total. The deignation on them doesn't look like Sony, Panasonic or Samsung, so probably Chinese copies.
 

Jeremy

Esteemed Pedelecer
Oct 25, 2007
1,010
3
Salisbury
There should be 40 cells in a 10S4P configuration. They'll be 3.7v (4.2v max) and 2200maH capacity each to give 37v 8.8aH total. The deignation on them doesn't look like Sony, Panasonic or Samsung, so probably Chinese copies.
FWIW, Sanyo/Panasonic moved production of 18650 cells to China last summer, so my guess is that even their cells will have been widely copied by now. These are up to around 3 to 3.1Ah, rather than the 2 to 2.4Ah or so typical of the older generation laptop 18650s.

Even the Sanyo/Panasonic cells aren't great though, with a pretty high IR, so it's anyone's guess what the copies might be like. Sony Konions are probably amongst the better cells, but don't seem to be used in laptops much, so don't seem readily available (except as old cordless tool pack cells).

If I was rebuilding one of these packs then I'd not bother with the cheaper low discharge rate laptop 18650s, but would try and get hold of some cells from either the Makita or DeWalt cordless tool packs. They are massively better in terms of internal resistance and hence efficiency, and if you can find a source of old Makita BL1830 packs you will probably get a lot of very good cells, as these have an internal fault that causes the end cells in the pack to prematurely fail, leaving most of the other cells in good condition.
 

jerrysimon

Esteemed Pedelecer
Aug 27, 2009
3,292
112
Cambridge, UK
I managed to get some of the last new Konions direct from China but now sold out.

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As Jeremy states you can get these from older failed Makita power packs but its a lottery over how many are any good in a dead pack. The new ones don't use these cells anymore I don't think.

Having said that I think you can still get them new individually with tabs from Germany. I think they will even make them up into packs. I notice they have brought the price down from 9 Euros each as well. That said a 10s4p (2*5s4p for balancing) pack with be nearer £200 so not really worth it.

This site has some interesting other cells. I have spent hours researching different cells mainly ones that will function without a BMS and these and the A123s seem the only ones that will survive plus they are pretty safe!



Regards

Jerry
 
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Scimitar

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jul 31, 2010
1,772
40
Ireland
If I was rebuilding one of these packs then I'd not bother with the cheaper low discharge rate laptop 18650s, but would try and get hold of some cells from either the Makita or DeWalt cordless tool packs. They are massively better in terms of internal resistance and hence efficiency, and if you can find a source of old Makita BL1830 packs you will probably get a lot of very good cells, as these have an internal fault that causes the end cells in the pack to prematurely fail, leaving most of the other cells in good condition.
Thumbs up for the Konion cells.
I have 15Ah of Bosch Fatpacks, stripped of their gubbins, going great guns in mine.