3D Printed DIY Battery Packs from Old Laptop Batteries

I found two old discarded batteries from HP and Lenovo laptops I owned which did not hold the charge and I was wandering what to do with them. I googled and found that they may actually hold 18650 battery cells that are still in working order. If the internal battery management system detects that even one of usually six cells is not in line with working parameters it will probably shut down the entire battery.

"Dead" laptop batteries. Used force and screwdriver to open them. Watch your fingers, you will need them trough entire life. You can see the 18650 LiPo modules in blue and green.

I discovered that there a hundreds of projects using the same refurbished module ranging from simple cell phone power packs to large solar system batteries.

Here is a tutorial on how to make a replacement hand drill battery pack with 3d printer and 18650 modules from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1042761:



Here is a tutorial on how to create a larger battery pack with 3d printed frame modules for storage of solar power that can be used in small electric vehicles:




Thingiverse page:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1320696

There is large number of 3d printed projects with 18650 battery modules:

http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:18650/page:1

Also take a look at: http://www.instructables.com/howto/18650/

Do keep in mind that you will have to test each module and that there will be some that are just dead and can not be used.

Since you can make battery of any size, you can literally make a Tesla powerwall equivalent for a fraction of the originals 3500+ USD price. This guy made a DIY Tesla powerwall for some 300 USD:





Think about it: a battery for your entire house for just 300 USD made from junk old laptop batteries. You will probably have many many questions so I strongly recommend checking the entire content on Jehu Garcia YT channel. This guy is a battery guru!

Soon I'm going to visit our regional electronic waste processing company in town of Slavonski Brod to see if they can give me more old laptop batteries to salvage the 18650 modules.

Do you have any experiences with 18650 batteries or any projects you made? Let me know in the comments!

Read More

3D printable AAA Battery Blanks for Wired Power

KermMartian developed this useful 3d printable AAA battery module that replaces the standard battery and enables you to connect your device to external power supply via wire connection. He used it on his calculator.

Detailed guide and STL files can be found at:

https://www.cemetech.net/news.php?id=760

Read More

SPOR solar battery charger with 3d printable case

Spor is a self-regenerating battery charger for USB devices. It can be charged by an outlet or passively via the sun. It can charge multiple devices at once, and can charge your phone practically as fast as a wall outlet. It also had 3d printable case.
Go and check it out:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spor/spor-solar-battery-chargers-usb-cables-and-accesso

Read More

DIY 3d printed external power supply adapter as replacement for digital camera battery

I hate proprietary batteries, non-user replaceable batteries and non-standard power supplies. Companies just change battery design on each model and sell expensive external power accessories. It is a sort of planed obsolescence and a bad business practice.

Alex wanted to use his camera for timelapse photography but the battery couldn't last for two hours. Commercial power adapter was 30 euros so he designed and printed his own external power adapter that replaces the original battery. He published the design on Thingiverse. Problem solved for everyone with
Canon Powershot SX200.

This approach could also be used to print battery adapters that use batteries of different formats. Some batteries and power supplies for older models are impossible to find and projects like this could bring some old hardware back to life or give more features to existing machines.

Source with more details:

http://tinkerlog.com/2012/05/13/battery-adapter-for-canon-powershot-sx200/

You can find the design for power supply here:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:22924


If you are interested in time-lapse photography here is printable rotating platform project:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/05/diy-3d-printed-rotating-platform-with.html

Read More

3d printing innovations from PARC

Scobleizer gives tour of PARC and showcases several 3d printing related technologies. This stuff is the future. Well worth viewing.

Video 1 - printed electronics

From video description:

PARC is the Palo Alto Research Center which is one of the world's most famous R&D labs (ethernet, object oriented printing, guis, and much more were invented here). In this five-part tour you'll see what these smart people are working on now. Steve Jobs, famously, in the early 1980s, visited this lab and bought the rights to get a deep look at the technology that would become the Macintosh.
Here you see some really crazy new circuit boards that can be printed on a variety of flexible materials. All printed on an inkjet printer. Get a look at how this technology could change the future.

Video 2 - printed batteries 

From video description:

This is part II of our PARC innovation tour. Here you'll see how PARC is inkjet printing lithium ion batteries and by doing that getting up to 30% more energy density without changing the chemistry of how these batteries work.

Video 3 - making things in democratic manufacturing with 3d printing (or how to get your custom printed SUV)

From video description:

How do you make things? Well, a team at PARC is working on helping people who make things make them faster and cheaper through a new software suite that you'll see here. PARC is a famous lab in Silicon Valley and this is part III of a five-part tour.

http://www.parc.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)


All videos are by famous Robert Scoble:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Scobleizer/videos

https://twitter.com/scobleizer

Read More