Repairing battery packs

[Migmac]

Any recommendations for one of the little spot welders for doing the tabs. Won’t see a lot of use, so doesn’t need to be an all singing all dancing model.

 

[optima21]

just use a decent soldering iron instead, I use a 50W temperature controlled iron with 3/16" tip for soldering Li-ion batteries

 

[Migmac]

I did all the joints with solder, the big tabs that were originally spot welded looked messy and i found them awkward to do. I’d get better with practise but we all like new toys

 

[armalites]

Plenty of them on ebay for around £40-50, I've thought about buying one a few times.

Recently I've changed the batteries in 4 Snap On rechargeable torches. I bought batteries with solder tags on them. Previously I've always just soldered direct with no issues.

I find roughing the surface and tinning first makes a huge difference.

I all of the applications I've soldered Li-Ion they will never be seen so not to concerned how they look.

 

[Turbo]

Whilst its relatively safe to solder to nicad/nimh it very inadvisable to solder to li-ion cells! Very easy to damage the internals of the cell.

I use one of these to spot weld li-ion battery packs. If you do the well documented upgrades on it & use a car battery as the power source it welds 18650's ok with practice. It will weld 0.15 pure nickel strip if you have it wound up fully but you will have to stop every 8 welds or so as the leads get a bit hot!

 

[Migmac]

Whilst its relatively safe to solder to nicad/nimh it very inadvisable to solder to li-ion cells! Very easy to damage the internals of the cell.

I use one of these to spot weld li-ion battery packs. If you do the well documented upgrades on it & use a car battery as the power source it welds 18650's ok with practice. It will weld 0.15 pure nickel strip if you have it wound up fully but you will have to stop every 8 welds or so as the leads get a bit hot!

Thanks Turbo