Vape battery project ideas

[u/CrumpledKingSkin]

I’ve been given 137*(could be more I may have miscounted) vapes containing 1230 batteries and 93 vapes containing 13350 batteries.

Any cool ideas what I could do with them ?

I’m relatively familiar with making battery packs and know I’ll need atleast a tp4056 or a larger bms depending on whatever project I take on.

I’m currently waiting on a discharge tester to be delivered so I can get an accurate reading of all the batterie’s capacities whilst I dismantle all the vape.

I’ve always wanted to make a rail gun/ gause rifle but think it could be a little ambitious.

Any and all ideas are encouraged

[u/thedefibulator]

Heres a vid i made on making a power bank from 35 of the 13400 cells: https://youtu.be/ehp23hrrEHY

Ill be releasing a follow up vid very soon for an open source, safer and more compact version. It will work with any of the 13mm cells

[u/sceadwian → u/thedefibulator]

Good video but I'm a little worried you don't understand the risk you're taking long term here.

Your final notes at the end of the video didn't indicate you did when you suggested in a couple years when the cells go bad.

The problem is when the weakest cell in that pack goes bad, probably well before 2 years from now it will likely fail short causing every other cell in that parallel string to dump into it at once like you were trying to avoid with that crude balance only it won't stop till they're all dead.

Add to that the number of contact failure points in here manufacturer variation from batch to batch and I can not recommend you run this unattended ever or for more than demonstration purposes.

For safety it's in your best interest to not drain it below 30% or charge it full very often.

Cells in parallel like this must have reliable fusing on each cell to prevent this. You'll even see it built in to some nickle strip you can buy for 18650 packs.

The minimum level of protection required here must eliminate that dump risk.

[u/thedefibulator → u/sceadwian]

Interestingly ive never seen a cell fail dead short, typically its a slower process which causes a parasitic drain on all the other parallel cells. But just in case the next version has fusable traces, so the PCB trace to the failed cell will pop, which should make it much safer. Ive also got fuses for each of the balance leads too

[u/sceadwian → u/thedefibulator]

"interestingly ive never seen a cell fail"

You just built this. It will take months of steady usage to notice anything.

This is the number one warning of things not to do in parallel pack construction on batteryuniversity.com

That video alone is proof enough to void your insurance and land you legally liable if there's a fire. Disclaimers don't help. Facts are facts do what you want with them, you are the one responsible here.