- Like many of you, we've spent a lot of money
on batteries over the years. These Red bricks for our
cameras, for example, cost a whopping $350 a pop, but that isn't even the
biggest problem with them. You see, even rechargeable
lithium batteries are consumable in a sense. After a few years of regular use, this guy right here gets
us a whopping 20 minutes of battery life. And, that's on a good day, which got us thinking
the housing's still fine. The battery management system, or BMS, which handles charging and safety, that's fine too. So, would anything prevent us from just swapping out
the tired cells inside, saving us some money and keeping needless
e-waste out of the landfill? Well, you've already seen
the title of the video. So, I think you know the answer to that, but what you don't know is just how deep this
twisted rabbit hole goes, or who our sponsor is, iFixit, though, in fairness, you might have seen that one coming. Is the battery in your device not lasting as long as it used to? Looking for a new project? iFixit has you covered. Stay tuned to the end of this video to learn about their
battery replacement kits. (upbeat music) Let's get this out of the way. While we have dabbled in it before, DIY battery repair can be very sketchy, especially with lithium cells. And, we would strongly recommend leaving this sort of
work to a professional, but the difficulty of the work
is only part of the problem. Let me show you what I mean. Most lithium based packs
have three basic components, a case to protect the sparky bits, the pack itself made
up of individual cells, they are 18650s in this case, and a battery management system or BMS. The BMS is the brains
of the whole operation, monitoring and controlling the charge and discharge rates of
the connected cells. Now, good ones will contain
a host of safety features, like overcharge protection,
over current protection, short circuit protection, and the like, meaning that they act as
your main line of defense against catastrophic failure, but they aren't the only one, the second safety is built
right into the cell itself in the form of a pressure relief vent, that it's right here on
the positive terminal. It's designed to vent the
waste gas that's generated by internal short circuits that naturally occur as the cell ages. This prevents the cell from pressurizing, creating an explosion hazard. You've probably experienced cell bulging or expansion before if you've got a really
old laptop or phone. It's a similar idea, except that 18650s have
rigid outer housing which won't just puff up. So, with all that outta the
way, this doesn't look so hard. Let's head to the shop. (explosion in background) Since our original intention was to replace the cells inside many of our aging battery packs, not just make a video about it, we snapped up this beast of a 30 kilogram spot
welder off of Craigslist for about $150. Seemed like a good investment, but it didn't have the correct leads on it for battery spot welding. So, $70 worth of Amazon shopping later, and we've got a pretty solid
spot welder at our disposal. We'll have a link down below
to the leads that we used here, and compared to our DIY lead
acid battery spot welder, so far, this is working a lot better. Before we begin, let's talk to safety precautions. We've got our fire extinguisher, though that's unlikely
to do much of anything with a lithium fire. So, we've also got our
fire safe workstation here, with a fire brick that we'll be doing our actual welding on, gloves and tongs, in case we actually need
to handle a ruptured cell, a sand bucket with additional sand to dump over top of it, our fume hood, as well as a pre-propped door for us to take that sand
bucket and rip it outside, in the event that we
need to get rid of it. Next up, let's talk about
preparation for our pack, because we have multiples
of these Red battery packs, we actually pre-disassembled
one for you guys, so that we can get going right away. But, the process is simple. You just want to de solder the leads that run between the BMS
and the battery pack itself, which includes the power leads, the balance charging leads, which are these guys right here, as well as this thermistor, which is going to monitor
the temperature of our pack, assuming that we are able
to actually reassemble it, with the new BMS. One other critical safety measure, is disposal of our old cells. We're gonna go ahead and cover up all of the contacts with something non-conductive, like electrical tape and
put it into our sand. And, you might be thinking to yourself, well, gee, Linus, that pack probably only has
one or two bad cells in it. Why don't you just swap
those out with good ones? No, we don't do that. We never ever do that. There's lots of electrical
engineering reasons not to do it. Don't do it. All new cells. Of course, getting your hands on new cells is not always the simplest thing ever. And, you need to make sure that you do your due diligence to ensure that you're
getting genuine cells rather than counterfeit ones which can have issues with
reliability, capacity, and safety. We picked these up from a local vape shop that we have enough of a
relationship with to trust. And, what Colin's doing
is he's checking them, not to make sure that they're genuine, but rather to make sure that they're all at a
similar enough voltage that when we go and
spot weld them together, they're not gonna suddenly (grunting) equalize. - Yeah, and it's good we did that, 'cause I found five cells that are low. So, these 3.2 volts where
everything else is 3.491. - Depending on how long it's
been sitting in inventory it might have drained more or less. And, we don't want that. Our next order of business
is to arrange the cells in exactly the same orientation before we spot weld them together. And, there are a number
of ways to do this. You can get these little
spacer kits off of Amazon. But, unfortunately for us, if we compare to our assembled pack, these leave a space, as advertised, and the original pack does not. So, we might have to
improvise a little bit, if we want to try to fit our
battery into the old housing. One idea we had was to
sacrifice one of our batteries and use it as a kind of holder, here we go, for our new cells, and then pop it out when we're done. Maybe, cut it away while we spot weld it. I don't know. Another complication
that we have to overcome is that we are using
generic nickel strips. Whoop, there we are. Make sure you're using
genuine nickel by the way, while Red is using
obviously some precut ones that look a little bit different. What do you lean towards, Colin? Using this boy as a holder? - [Colin] I think we
should snip it in half. Yeah, that way we can solder the topside, flip it over, and solder the bottom side, while still having support
on both sides, so-- - I really like it. Let's run it through the band saw. (saw whirring) So, these are all positive terminal up. Boopity, boop, boop, boop. Oh, this is gonna work okay. I think what we're gonna-- (crosstalk) We're gonna put them on and then yeah. And, then we'll wrap them and then I think we're
in really great shape. Colin was like, I don't think
we're gonna fit this back in the original housing. And, I'm like, I wanna try. My life's in your hands, Colin. - [David] Actually, all of our lives are in your hands, Linus. - Alright. (grunting) That's not good. I'm kind of imagining that I hold this and you wrap the tape. There we go. I have seen dumber things. Now, at this point, we could start laying
down our nickel strips and spot welding everything together, but if we make even
one mistake, we are, A, evacuating this room, and, B, starting our project
completely from scratch. So, we wanna go ahead
and do some test welds. Now, we got this all dialed in for a single layer of nickel
strip over a test cell. By the way, shout out
to the vape shop again for giving us a bunch of testers here. But, what we haven't tried is two layers. So, I'm gonna play around
with this a little bit and see if we can get
a nice clean spot weld on some of our test cells here. First spot weld, there's a little bit of
spring tension in this. See, we want that spring to go down. Then, we're gonna go ahead and... It's definitely on there. Let's grab another one
and let's try two layers. - [Colin] You should usually do two hits. - Oh, I will. I will. I will. Don't worry. So, we're doing a weld heat of 690, a ramp speed of three, and we think this means 14 milliseconds. Let's see how it handles two
layers at our current setting. - [Colin] I think it'll be fine. - You know what? I don't think we have to
change anything, Colin. Oh, no, it popped. Okay. - [Colin] Try again. Just clean up the tip. - Okay, whew. - [Colin] Now, do that 32 more times. - Okay, this is pretty sweet. (laughing) I'm having fun. Now, this is where things
get a little bit interesting. We're about to do our second layer. Colin, you wanna have a look
at this and see how it's going? - [Colin] I need a clipboard
so I can grade you. - Yeah, thanks. - [Colin] It looks like a battery pack. - This is the part I'm most nervous about, because we need to do four cells in a row, and this is where we're
first going to connect positive and negative terminals. So, this is where we find out
how Colin's measurements went. Hoping for no sparks. No sparks, Colin. - [Colin] Yay. - You sound less enthusiastic than me. Were you hoping for some sparks? The thing about super high current is that it doesn't just melt your nickel and your cell together. It also melts your tips
if they're not great tips. You know what? Maybe, we won't have the link to where to buy these down below there. Really not that great. - [Colin] Okay, great. - I'd also like to take a moment to point out that I'm a
total amateur at this. So, if you're looking to actually build your own battery packs, there are lots of other
better resources out there. (censoring beep) - [Colin] Yep. - That was a matter of time. Ah, fudge. Well, we popped one. Ah, think I didn't clean
the tip often enough. Well, that was a bummer, but the good news is the video's not over. We had a backup plan, because we knew going into this that lithium batteries are
much, much more volatile than the nickel metal hydride batteries that you might find in your
parents' old power tools. Not only are the cases much thinner, which improves power density, but makes them more
susceptible to rupturing, but the lithium inside them is chemically much more reactive. You guys have probably seen the handful of videos on the news of electric vehicles bursting into flames. That's a lithium battery
fire and it is no joke. Not only are they
essentially inextinguishable, but the smoke they emit is toxic too. We actually dumped more sand on that and moved it away from the
door next to the concrete wall. There will be no fire there. So, here is what our backup plan is. Rather than trying to
tackle a 16 cell pack, we're gonna take one of our our smaller
Sony style batteries, which has just four cells and try to rebuild this one. The silver lining in all this is that now you guys get
to see the entire process. So, there you go. We've pulled the housing
off of the BMS here. I'm sure all of the DIY
e-bike battery folks are... Have already left their comments. Wow, they're using really
pinner nickel strips on this. Look at this. The minimum possible
amount of nickel was used. - [Colin] Backup sand bins right here. - Yeah, we got it? Alright, thanks, Colin. Anger level's so high right now. (electrical zapping) (metal clanging) (censored beep) (censored beep) Well, we're down to four matching cells. So, this will be our last attempt. Are you guys ready to go again? - [David] Yeah, I've got a good feeling
about these batteries. - What we need to check now is if my leads are going to
line up with the BMS though. This guy is gonna go here and
this guy is gonna go here. So, I'm just gonna trim those down. Here we go. And, then, I'm gonna double check again to make sure I snip off the right part. I'm okay. I'm okay, boys. You know what? Now's a good time to throw
it into the housing then. Tell me something, David. - [David] Yep? - Would you put this pack in a camera? - [David] Do I own the
camera or is it your camera? - It's my camera - Maybe. (Linus and David chuckling) - And, this is where we
bunged it up last time. (censored beep) Do you believe? - [David] I believe. - [Colin] Sandpaper between. - Yeah, you better believe it. (metal scraping) Two more strips. And, then this one, this last one here actually
needs to be quite a bit longer. Do we got this, guys? Theoretically, that's it. Where's the multi meter? We should all see seven volts. Here we go, boys. - [Colin] Better have seven volts. - 6.98, we're short. (Colin groaning) (Linus laughing) Kidding, kidding, kidding. I just wanna cut away
this little square here. Rats, I cut away more of it
than I had meant to there. Let's solder a wire to it. (censored beep) (censored beep) We had a mishap with our
first BMS and the snips. And, unfortunately, when I saw the spark, I kind of jerked, and moved fast, and I'm not sure whether the spark was from shorting the
battery or shorting the BMS. So, we might have killed the BMS, which means that we had to go find another
sacrificial battery, which was also on its last legs anyway. And, we are going to use that BMS. So, I'm just gonna go
ahead and solder that guy. What do you think guys? - [Colin] Much higher chance. - Nothing. This time, I'm surprised. - [Colin] That's as good as you can get. - Yeah, there's nothing... We didn't do anything wrong this time. - [Colin] Check the pack voltage. - [Linus] Battery. - [Colin] Seven volts. - All that means is that these pads are definitely connected. Please, tell me this is a cheap light. - [David] It's a monitor. It's not cheap. - Oh, it's a... (gasping) That's it. This time, I'm sure we
did everything right. The pack is assembled correctly. The BMS was went straight out
of a working one onto ours. I am really surprised this didn't work. Actually, point of
clarification, I'm furious, but not surprised. Let's talk about that. We discovered in our initial
research for this project, that even if we had successfully
welded together a battery for this Red brick, it wouldn't have come back to life. And, the reason for that is because battery manufacturers
are (censored beep) us. There are multiple tiers of
anti right to repair behavior. One of the simplest is
mechanical obstruction, where manufacturers use
brittle plastic, glue, single use fasteners, and other similar strategies to make repairing their
devices impractical. Sometimes this is just plain not caring about the user or the environment, while other times, this happens for malicious reasons, like planned obsolescence. Either way, I promise neither of them will ever happen with our
merch from lttstore.com. Get yours today. The next tier of anti
right to repair behavior is soft obstruction. This is almost always on purpose and exists solely to prevent
end users and third parties from repairing or
rejuvenating their devices, with manufacturers often citing
safety as a justification. That is what we ran into with, well, would've run into with our Red pack and appears to be what we
ran into with our other pack. But, how are they doing that? Well, there are four
different types of BMS, dumb, basic, smart, and evil. Dumb is no BMS at all, like these RC lipo batteries, each cell's voltage is maintained
at the time of recharging by a much more sophisticated
battery charger using the balance lead. A basic BMS allows you to safely use and charge the battery
pack with a simple charger, while protecting against under
and over current situations. So, a lot better than nothing. A smart BMS will include cell balancing and some level of capacity learning, along with self resetting for faults, and, ideally, the ability to resell, no, not like on Facebook marketplace, to replace the cells like we attempted today. Finally, there's evil BMSs, which thankfully we don't
see that much of these days. What makes them evil is that after a set
number of charge cycles, they will switch off permanently, even if they could still work. And, if you, as a manufacturer, ever built this sort
of intentional e-waste, shame on you. All of which raises some questions then. What exactly did we see today? According to Tyler from THTbattery.com, Red batteries, at least these older Red bricks, are extremely challenging to re-cell, because there's a good chance the BMS will simply not
wake up after the operation. He hasn't put the R&D
into solving the problem, 'cause there just haven't
been enough requests, but there are a couple
possible explanations for this. The malicious one is that
Red's contract manufacturer could be using software to detect either cell disconnection or a change in capacity that will shut down the BMS on purpose. In which case, it's basically an evil one, for all intents and purposes. The good news is that replacing the BMS with a generic one for about $17 could get you back up and running, if you don't need the
original indicator lights, or anything like that. The careless possibility is
that they used volatile storage for the BMS's programming
that wipes itself, if it loses power. Given the cost difference, this honestly could also be considered a malicious design decision. Now, something that I wanna
make clear at this stage is that I am not advocating for user serviceable battery packs, considering the precision
required for safe assembly and the volatility of the chemistry, that's just not realistic, as we observe today. But, there's a middle ground here. Ah, yes, this pack is made
by a company called bebob, a German battery manufacturer that just so happens to supply one of the largest cinema camera
makers in the world, ARRI. They advertise their
cells to be replaceable and they even have an indicator that tells you when
you've reached 80 and 60% of the original capacity. When that happens, you can send it to them and
they will replace the cells at a discount. Other cinema brands, take notes. We're not even asking you
to be as awesome as bebob, but the least you can do is not put up roadblocks on purpose. So, then, the safest way
that you can help right now is just returning your
batteries to be recycled when you're done with them. But, in an increasingly electrified world, producers of battery powered devices have a responsibility to plan ahead. and to extend the lifespan
of their products. and figure out what's
supposed to happen to them when they reach the end of their life. On that note, as it turns out, one of the largest battery
recycling facilities in North America, RETRIEV Technologies, is just a few hours away from us. So, let us know in the comments if you want us to go check
out how it's done in person and get subscribed, so you don't miss it. And, don't miss our sponsor, iFixit. iFixit wants to help you keep
your new devices powered up, like when they were new. iFixit has a wide range of
battery replacement kits for your mobile devices, kits for laptops, cell phones,
tablets, smart watches, and even Nintendo switches. You don't need to be an
expert to repair your devices, because each kit comes
with simple to follow, step by step instructions with photos to walk you
through your replacement. So, learn a new hobby while saving yourself some time and money by going to iFixit.com/LTT. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe you'll enjoy our other this should be a legal video, where manufacturers were caught
swapping components on SSDs, effectively advertising one
thing and delivering another.
