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Increase the capacity (runtime) of your laptop battery.

by xeijix on May 15, 2007

Table of Contents

License: Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Intro: Increase the capacity (runtime) of your laptop battery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

step 1: External battery pack? Rip it apart and never think of using an external pack again! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

step 2: How laptop batteries work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

step 3: Parts list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

step 4: Preparation/setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

step 5: Safety first: test the darn thing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

step 6: Completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
License: Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)

Intro: Increase the capacity (runtime) of your laptop battery.

Is your laptop battery dead?
Is the runtime not long enough to get you through the day?
Do you carry one of those huge external battery packs?

This instructable is intended to show how one may replace the dead li-ion/li-poly cells of a laptop battery and how one may increase the capacity of the battery by adding
extra cells.

The reason why adding extra cells to the internal battery is suggested compared to carrying around an external battery pack is that for the same amount of cells in an
external pack, the laptop can run significantly longer if those cells were used internally.

Image Notes
1. Complete pack, lasts 9 hours as opposed to the 3 hours w/ the original number of cells.

step 1: External battery pack? Rip it apart and never think of using an external pack again!
So what's the voltage rating on your internal battery pack?
What's the rating on your power brick?

Lets use my tablet computer as an example.

The battery pack is rated for 3.7v * 3 cells or about 11volts. However, the power brick outputs 20v.

I've bought external battery packs before and have calculated how long it should last using watt hours instead of amp hours. However, that was wrong. The battery pack
would need to output 20v in order to power my tablet, thus the battery cells used to increase the voltage does not attribute to the amp hours, which is indicative of how
long the battery pack should last. Thus, a difference of 9 volts is significant. That's about 2 li-ion cells wasted just to match the voltage.

Another problem with using external packs is that the laptop would think that it's connected to an outlet, thus is not so weary of watching how much power it drains. The
power brick for my tablet outputs 2.5 amps, thus it is possible at times my tablet is drawing 2.5 amps from the external pack. However, the internal batt pack only requires
an average of 1 amp per hour.

So what would one do in order to increase the runtime of one's battery pack? Forget the external pack, just add more cells to the internal one.

step 2: How laptop batteries work

Laptop batteries are complicated pieces of equipment. They are somewhat redundant as well. There's a 'smart circuit' in the battery pack that monitors the conditions of
the battery cells, however, it does not do what a lot of people say it does.

The image below is a typical smart circuit. It has four wires running out of it: ground, power, and two 'intermediary power' wires (actually the ground wire is just the tab on
the right).

Lithium cells output about 3.7 volts. Like all batteries, in order to increase voltage, they are connected in series. However, charging a "pack" by adding power through the
positive node and negative node of the whole battery pack is dangerous. They are not guaranteed to charge evenly (refer to resistance in series in a physics text). This
means one cell may overcharge and explode, which is very bad especially since it's lithium. The intermediatary power wires are sandwhiched between every series
connection of the battery pack so that it monitors each individual cell.

Now on to the nitty gritty. Most people would say not to mess around with the smart circuit, and they are correct. But if handled correctly, it won't be a problem. The core
of the smart circuit does not control the charging cutoff and output cutoff when the gauge goes to 100% or 0% (older model laptops do, but not anymore). The smart
circuit merely lets the enduser (laptop user) know how long they have before the battery runs out and let them turn on special options such as hibernation in order to save
their work. Charging and discharging cutoff is done by a secondary monitoring circuit that monitors a one of two states called "end voltage" or "end amperage". So for
those who believe that they must charge and discharge their batteries once a month or so to "recalibrate" the battery are wrong; it only recalibrates the gauge, not the
actual capacity of the battery. That is, if one is missing about 20% of their battery capacity due to the gauge being offsetted, the only reason why one would need to
recalibrate is because they want to utilize the hibernation/shut off option when the capacity reaches too low. If one were to turn that option off, one can use the battery
pack until it drains fully, completely ignoring the fact that the battery meter is flashing 0% (Because the meter does not control the battery's cutoff point, just the
computer's). However, if the li-ion cell is dead/dying, no number of charge and discharge cycles can bring the battery back to life; the cell is physically dead (so forget
about the term 'digital memory loss').

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
 Image Notes
1. Power wire
2. first intermediary wire
3. second intermediary wire
4. Ground

step 3: Parts list

Parts:

Soldering gun
Solder (but of course)
SAND (A MUST)
BIG METAL CAN WITH LID (A MUST)
fire extinguisher (somewhat a must depending on how careful you are)
wires
alligator clips
Laptop
dead battery
undead battery (zombie batteries) I mean, new lithium ion or lithium polymer cells (make sure you know which your battery uses)
duct tape (geek's best friend)

Other things as you see fit (second hand soldering helper, wire cutters, wire strippers, etc)

step 4: Preparation/setup
Safety preparations

-put sand in can (picture below)

-place fire extinguisher someplace close

Battery preparations

-if you're just replacing your dead cells with new ones, obtain the same number of cells. As for choosing the capacity, bigger is better.
-Note how the cells are connected in series and parallel, and solder your new battery pack the same way.
-NOTE: do not remove dead battery cells from battery pack (explained later on)

-if you're increasing the capacity of battery pack, obtain nth times the number of cells in your battery pack (an original pack of 3 cells can have 6,9,12 cells, etc)
-for every series connection in the original pack, you can add cells in parallel. (a pack with 3 cells in series can accomodate 6 cells (pairs in parallel) in series. That is, two
in parallel, and attach those pairs in series, etc) any number of cells in parallel is ok.
-NOTE: once again, do not remove the original cells from the battery pack.

My battery pack below has 3 sets of 4 cells in parallel, which are connected in series. (note: parallel groups are separated as left, middle and right. ) Wires are also
connected so that I can solder the new pack to the smart circuit easily.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
 Image Notes Image Notes
1. Sand 1. 4 cells in parallel
2. in can 2. Another four in parallel
3. Yet another 4 in parallel
4. ground pin
5. power pin
6. intermediatary pin
7. intermediary pin

Image Notes
1. Add as many cells in parallel as you'd like. It would only make your laptop last
longer =].
2. Number of intermediary wires vary between laptop batteries. Since mine has
three cells, it has two intermediary wires. A 4 cell battery would have 3
intermediary wires, etc.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
step 5: Safety first: test the darn thing
I've seen some people who've posted how-to's for replacing laptop cells immediately replace the cells seal the battery and use it. This is extremely dangerous, unless you
want to cook your lap. The quality of the cells purchased is unknown, and needs to be tested. (manufacturers of laptop batteries quality test their batteries before shipping
them off. And sadly, sometimes a batch can go undetected)

-So, attach alligator clip w/ wires to the new pack and bury it in the sand (don't forget which clip belongs to which wire)

-Here's the tricky part (yet another thing other how-to's messed up.) The reason why I said not to disconnect the original (dead) cells from the smart circuit (which I
inadvertently did. Don't worry, it was my test battery) is because the circuit requires a constant power supply or the smart circuit guage messes up. You might wonder
why worry about the gauge if it doesn't contribute to charge and discharge cutoff. This is because the laptop requires a signal from the circuit before the laptop will turn on
(in case the cells are thought to be drained and draining more, even for a second can kill the li-ion cells. Or simply, something's wrong with the battery). So, connect the
new pack to the circuit before disconnecting the original battery cells.

-However, what if you're using alligator clips, which is a temporary connection? How can you disconnect and solder on permanent connections? Either, solder on the new
connections while leaving the clips connected, or you can even use a power brick with about the same voltage as the whole battery pack (a 11.1 v pack actually ranges
from 12.68 v to 7 v so a power brick at 12 v is ok). But remember to add a resistor between either the anode or cathode of the power brick and the circuit, so you won't kill
the circuit board. (Not connecting intermediate pins should be ok, I haven't tried. If you worry about this, you can reuse your dead cell as a temporary power source while
soldering on the new pack.)

-Plug in the battery circuit into the laptop and place it FAR AWAY from the battery pack. Test the battery pack. Charge is first, then completely discharge it, then charge it
again. This is when you should watch over the battery pack intently, because it might explode (sand should stifle the fire, but immediately unplug the battery from the
laptop.) The fear here is the type of secondary circuit used to monitor end states. End Voltage type circuit is ok, but end amperage is no good. If you can tell what type
you have just by looking at the circuitry, then you're in good shape, but if you can't there's always the fear of an explosion. From my experience, the circuit is typically end
voltage.

Image Notes Image Notes

1. Battery in sand in can 1. Who doesn't love Ronon

step 6: Completion
-If your battery doesn't explode/catch on fire, that means the circuit is good/the cells are good.
-Solder it permanently to to the circuit, and fit it back into the plastic housing if its the same number of cells, if not be creative and line the cells up so it fits nicely
below/behind/etc your laptop. Use duct tape or if you have, shrink wrap it with rubber shrink wrap.
-And remember, be careful around rechargeable lithium batteries.

-Update: I forgot to mention. Depending on the type of "smart" fuel gauge, adding more cells won't change the 'estimated hours left' displayed by the laptop, this is
because the number of hours might be a fixed range. One might think that even if it's a fixed range, the number of hours left or % capacity left might be proportional to the
actual number, however, depending on the type of circuit used to count the "electrons" (some use ic's called electron counters), it might assume the capacity to be fixed
as well, thus the estimated capacity won't be proportional, just truncated. However, from my experience, the capacity gauge stops at about 7%, until the physical battery
drains until 7%, so it still effectively alerts the user when the battery is drained after below 7%.

-Update 2: At first I thought my smart board fuel gauge circuit was of fixed capacity, but after a few complete discharges, it recalibrated. Now it knows the capacity of my
new pack and estimates accordingly (ranges from 9 - 8 hours total runtime depending if I'm constantly using my secondary hard drive accessed via USB and/or lcd
backlight levels)

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
 Image Notes
1. Complete pack, lasts 9 hours as opposed to the 3 hours w/ the original number of cells.

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Comments
50 comments Add Comment view all 91 comments

boostergold1 says: Jan 4, 2011. 11:22 AM REPLY

Hmm... i have always been suspicious when my battery was holding a charge for several hours one day and then the next it quit working all together
immediately as i was working on it. What a joke. Does this mean i didn't have to waste my money on a replacement laptop battery ?

xeijix says: Jan 4, 2011. 5:03 PM REPLY

So it just stopped working? How did it stop working?

Can you boot it up with the battery then it runs out of battery after a few usecs/secs/minutes?

Can you boot it up with battery and power supply in place, and when it fully boots, can you run on battery only (ie. unplug the power supply)?

Sounds like the smart circuit just died although I've never encountered such a thing before.

Ted_lens says: Dec 16, 2010. 1:55 PM REPLY

1st of all, great instructable! your instructable and some other sources made me confident enough to rip apart my broken laptop battery...here is the deal:
My toshiba batterypack broke down a while ago... symptoms were:
- battery only had power for +-10 minutes
- batterypack drew large amount of current when charging, resulting in 2 blown adapters before i found this out.

So I ripped this thing apart and found 6 us18650gr cells inside. these cells are unprotected and wired to some electronic board like a lot of batterypacks are.
So i ordered 6 unprotected replacement cells which are being shipped to me right now.

however further testing of the old cells made me doubt whether the cells are faulty, or maybe if the circuit-board is defective.
- all old cells read out +-4volts without load
- under load they all give me about 3.7 volts.

could it be possible that the circuit-board screwed up here instead of the individual cells? would be uncool since, in that case i might have ordered some
useless batteries. Could anybody share their thoughts on this?

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
 martinlass says: Sep 22, 2010. 10:37 AM REPLY
Hi xeijix,
Great Tutorial!

Can you tell me where you got the replacement Lithium batteries for you LS800? I have hunted the internet like a demon and I cannot find anything that
seems suitable except the AA size.
Martin

xeijix says: Sep 22, 2010. 11:17 AM REPLY

These two sites have what you are looking for:
http://www.all-battery.com/
http://www.batteryspace.com/

grimgroper says: May 16, 2010. 11:46 AM REPLY

great tutorial!! i want to build one that will fit in my back pack and connect via a second cable.. so it will be huge, possibly 20 cells.

what would happen if they were unevenly discharged? say i unplugged the laptop drained the internal battery then plugged the back pack one in after. visa
versa.

xeijix says: May 16, 2010. 12:21 PM REPLY

definitely don't do that. The circuit board needs to keep track of the charging and discharging of the cells. And if you're connecting cells in parallel that
are unevenly charged, that won't be good for the cells. On top of that, some of the energy stored in the charged cells will go towards charging the
depleted cells.

grimgroper says: May 16, 2010. 4:26 PM REPLY

so would it be possible to build the pack with its own smart circuit?

xeijix says: May 16, 2010. 6:25 PM REPLY

Not the way I imagine you want it. The only way you can do it would be to just make a huge battery pack that's in your bag or something, and
have the cable connected to the smart circuit and contact pins of the laptop battery w/o any cells in the original battery chassis. Essentially its just
a large battery pack but the place you store the cells would be away from the rest of the battery. However, you cannot severe the connection
between the cells and the smart circuit.

Since you want to option of carrying a larger battery pack (or not), i suggest getting a second laptop battery and stripping that for its smart circuit
and stuff. You'll still have to swap the batteries when the original is low, etc.

grimgroper says: May 16, 2010. 10:05 PM REPLY

okay yep that makes sense, so will i be able to use a different laptops smart circuit or will i have to use the same one as in the laptops
original battery? i will connect some sort of relay circuit with a capacitor (to make an uninterrupted switch between batteries) to disconnect the
internal battery when the external one is connected. this would e between the smart circuits and the laptop. i didnt understand, does the smart
circuit control the recharge?(would i be able to recharge the second set of cells with a separate charging circuit rather than through the laptop,
perhaps more powerful charger... )

thanks for you help..

its hard to find some one willing to give out advice on laptop batteries.

xeijix says: May 17, 2010. 7:48 AM REPLY

Sorry that's not what I meant. Simply stated, you just need two laptop batteries. When one runs dry, swap it (of course the replacement
laptop battery will be your super huge one).

For uninterrupted switching, that would depend on whether your laptop supports hot swapping laptop batteries (some lets you swap when
you place the laptop on standby). If not, you'll need to find a way to do it. Something like this: www.engadget.com/2008/02/04/hotswap-
laptop-batteries-let-you-keep-the-juice-flowing/ might work(although in the picture, the person has a dedicated input for the laptop battery
during swap, in our implementation, we will use the replacement laptop battery to charge via the laptop charge port). You'll just need to
purchase a voltage up converter to reach the correct voltage level for the laptop's charging port; and connect that circuit directly to the
voltage out of the laptop battery.

So to swap, you would plug in the replacement battery via the laptop charge port; remove the used-up laptop battery (at this point the
laptop will get its energy from the replacement battery); put in the replacement battery; remove the cable from the replacement battery to
the laptop charge port.

As for a more powerful charger, in the scenario I've just described, you would need to charge through your laptop or a special external
battery dock that the manufacturer may (or may not) sell. www.amazon.com/External-Laptop-Battery-Charger-Inspiron/dp/B001LWWHOI
something like that (although that is specifically for that laptop model)

y2j514 says: May 6, 2010. 10:10 PM REPLY

So I went about doing this before I found your instructable. I was replacing my dead cells from a tutorial I found online. They did not however warn about
the smart circuit needing power. It was disconnected for over 2 weeks. When I put the new battery pack in windows detects the battery at 0% and if i
remove the AC power it turns off immediately (like you said the gauge is wrong). Is there anyway to fix this?!?!

Thanks!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
 xeijix says: May 6, 2010. 11:23 PM REPLY
did you turn off the battery warning action option in the battery manager window? Typically, the laptop is forced to hibernate when its below a certain
battery level. If you turn that option off, you should be able to leave the laptop on until the battery actually discharges. Once you do that, recharge the
battery while leaving the laptop off. Then repeat the discharge. Repeat over and over again and hope that the smart circuit resets. If the data stored on
the circuit isn't corrupt, it should reset. If not, you won't be able to fix it unless you happen to have extensive knowledge of how to program the smart
circuit with the proper values.

y2j514 says: May 7, 2010. 3:49 PM REPLY

I tried this. Ran into a tiny snag. You can not simply tell windows to "do nothing" for a critical battery - well that is you can not do it through normal
means. I found this online, and it allowed me tell windows to do nothing if the battery reads critical. I then disconnected the AC and the laptop just
died, its not communicating with the battery at all =(
What are my options?

To change the 'Battery->Critical battery action->'On battery' setting to "Do nothing" using powercfg.exe

1. activate the power scheme you want to modify.

2. open an elevated command console (windows key, type 'cmd' in start menu, press "ctrl+shift+enter", click 'continue')
3. execute "powercfg -setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_BATTERY BATACTIONCRIT 0"
4. your current power scheme will show "Battery->Critical battery action->On battery: Do nothing" despite the option being unavailable in the
drop box.

xeijix says: May 7, 2010. 4:26 PM REPLY

Have you actually tried charging the battery while the laptop was off before hand? It's very likely the cells are physically depleted. If you're sure
the cells have some charge, then I don't know what else you can do. It would seem like your circuit is fried. It doesn't make sense that it would
immediately die if you unplug the AC if there is charge in the cells. The smart circuit only prevents you from turning the laptop on if the circuit
reports that its empty. Technically, once you're booted into windows and you disable the critical battery action, it should definitely continue
running until the cells actually run dry.

y2j514 says: May 7, 2010. 5:08 PM REPLY

One trillion percent sure there s a charge. Had it plugged in for a night before booting. My multimeter reads a voltage. When windows boots,
it says the battery is at 0% and NOT charging. Has to be the smart circuit. Ill try connecting the known to be working old cells and see if it
works suddenly.

y2j514 says: May 8, 2010. 7:29 AM REPLY

Didn`t work! Guess the bloody chip is corrupt. Aside from ordering a new battery, is there anywhere I can purchase a new working circuit
board? =(

xeijix says: May 8, 2010. 8:28 AM REPLY

sorry dude, like all manufacturers, the circuit board is trade secret (although its not really) the point is, they don't like selling these
sorta stuff to end users.

cyz980313 says: Apr 9, 2009. 9:16 PM REPLY

u said we could use lithium polymer battery, but the lipo batteries are really dangerous. if u over charge them, they'll catch on fire. i know because by r/c car
was destroyed because of li po batteries. so i suggest that u delete that suggestion!

xeijix says: Apr 10, 2009. 6:28 AM REPLY

I'm sure you mean well, but ALL devices nowadays use either lithium polymer or lithium ion. Either one will catch on fire if overcharged as I've explained
in the instructable. It's up to the user to be safe, and I've given enough warnings.

hansonsux says: Mar 29, 2010. 11:30 PM REPLY

There are classic lithium ion cylindrical cells, and Lithium-Polymer (Lipo). Lipo's are actually safer as they contain less flameable liquid electrolyte.
As with RC stuff fires - I think it's more of these batteries taking alot of abuse. Overheating, Overcharging, shorts, damaged in crashes, etc. No way
they should explode that violently in normal use in some of the pictures I've seen. People have been holding Lipo's now to their face (cell phone) for
some years now. Explosions are rare, despite the media hypeing the few cases when defecticve batteries have gone off.

j- says: Oct 27, 2009. 5:43 PM REPLY

Inspired by this guide, and ignoring all safety warnings, I expanded my laptop's battery using some old dell battery packs.
sites.google.com/site/keyboarddriver/

masterchrisx3 says: Sep 29, 2009. 9:22 PM REPLY

nice tablet pc what kind is it?

xeijix says: Sep 30, 2009. 11:17 AM REPLY

motion computing LS800. It's been discontinued though.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
 bombmaker2 says: Oct 10, 2009. 6:33 PM REPLY
TO EBAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sonicdude10 says: Aug 28, 2009. 4:53 PM REPLY

The battery meter stops at 80% no matter what. how do I callibrate this to get everything working right before I tear into am dead set on getting around 10
hours of run time. Again, I know the math and the soldering skills to do this. Making a case to velcro to the lid won't be too hard either. What's next after I get
the cells and other related components?

xeijix says: Aug 29, 2009. 4:56 AM REPLY

disable the battery meter's shutdown/hibernation setting when the battery meter hits like 3% or something. It should be some option in the control panel
or properties option when you get the second mouse button menu over the battery meter. Then keep the laptop turned on until it runs out of juice (which
will turn it "off", more like pulling the plug on a non-battery computer). Charge it (while it's turned off). Turn it back on, and let it drain again (making sure
the 3% shutdown function is disabled). Do this over and over (max # of tries is 5-ish, you should really need 3: first drain tells the batteries you're
calibrating, then the charge afterwards does half of the calibration and the second drain calibrates the other half. But of course you need to charge it
once again, and you might as well test if the calibration went well by draining it)

sonicdude10 says: Aug 27, 2009. 11:45 PM REPLY

More info. The battery only charges to 80% (about 1.5 hours) computer estimated. battery is brand new. The computer off or battery bad? I want to use
controller with better cells (a LOT more cells) if it is still good. Any ideas from any fellow user(s)? It would be handy to go more than an hour and a half of
runtime. (I verified it.) KEEP COMPUTING!!!!!! (For several hours anyway.)

xeijix says: Aug 28, 2009. 10:16 AM REPLY

Does it stop charging at 80%? cause it should read 100% if the computer actually stops charging the battery. It may jump to 80% after you unplug the
power cable, but it shouldn't charge to 80% and stop. Did you calibrate the battery as described in the last step of this instructable? You don't have to
mod a battery pack to calibrate the batteries, you should do this once every month or so.

sonicdude10 says: Aug 27, 2009. 11:24 PM REPLY

What can you tell me about this mod on my computer. I have a Sony VAIO PCG-GRX 570 laptop (Iknow it is old but the computer was $20 and runs good
after a small repair to a plat cable.) Battery is a replacement li-ion PCGA-BP2NX and I counted 8 pins on the connection. Capacity is 4400 mAh and last 1.5
hours (computer estimated). Help?????? Almost forgot: I am good at electronics and can mod this myself if I knew the proper way.

Mikey D says: Apr 26, 2009. 2:10 PM REPLY

Question: I have already seperated a cell from the pack (I found your instructable after starting the project) Is my charge circuit already damaged, or can I
simply replace the batteries, test like you have described, and hope it recalibrates on it's own? Thanks for your time, Mikey

xeijix says: Apr 26, 2009. 9:03 PM REPLY

well, with my first attempt, I actually removed the old cells without keeping the charge circuit powered. It still "worked" in a sense that I was lucky that the
state of the charge circuit was such that it was good enough to fool the laptop to turn on. However, no number of discharge cycles was able to recalibrate
it, so I always saw something like warning, three minutes remaining, and I had to use it with the battery monitoring warning options turned off (the status
would stay at 0% for all 6 hours). I highly doubt the charge circuit is ok. There's a chance it might act like my old pack. However, there are other tutorials
out there where they did not even mention that you need to keep the circuit charged. So it's worth a try.

keni_matukoshi says: Nov 17, 2008. 7:42 AM REPLY

Hi there, Unfortunately, I could not replace mine. It seems the contacts has been welded to the board. I do have a soldering iron. Could someone advice?
Thanks.....

xeijix says: Nov 17, 2008. 11:08 AM REPLY

I'm assuming the contacts are fairly long. If you have some needle nose pliers and perhaps something to wedge the contacts on the cell side, you can rip
the contacts off of the cells. You can solder on wires to the freed contacts. If you can't rip them off, you can always cut off the contacts, but giving
yourself enough contact space for soldering.

keni_matukoshi says: Jan 22, 2009. 11:21 AM REPLY

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. I did try this the whole night only to find out the battery pack's board has to be troubleshoot/tested for failure and
eventually the main powerboard on the laptop ...(darn!) Can anyone lead me someplace for troubleshooting the battery pack's board? By the way
soldering lead and steel don't solder well, I ended up having a longer batt than the package... and reslodering...

xeijix says: Jan 22, 2009. 8:14 PM REPLY

you need flux and need to heat the tabs a bit longer. I don't understand what you mean by troubleshooting. Are you saying the battery pack isn't
working? If the smbus controller is dead (not powering the laptop correctly) you really need a jtag programmer and knowledge of the
communication protocol to fix that, which isn't worth it. I would suggest getting another 'dead' battery and playing around with that. That is what I
did in actuality. I got someone to donate their dead battery.

alex-sharetskiy says: Nov 8, 2008. 12:42 PM REPLY

Wow 9 hours of battery life! do you think i ca switch out 18650 with CR123? thanks in advance!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
 xeijix says: Nov 8, 2008. 4:35 PM REPLY
CR123 rechargeable lithium ion batteries have a charge monitoring circuitboard built inside them so unless you remove them, you shouldn't use them.
Also, they are exceptionally lower in capacity. You should really make the investment for larger capacity. It's worth it.

alex-sharetskiy says: Nov 8, 2008. 5:23 PM REPLY

the problem is that i need 12 cells for a total of 8400mah 10.8v

Patented says: Sep 20, 2008. 7:10 PM REPLY

Why am I a collaborator to this instructables?

Derin says: Aug 2, 2008. 11:42 PM REPLY

wow,my laptop is so old it is equipped with NiMH!

rak says: Jun 3, 2008. 6:40 PM REPLY

very nice idea- but im not risking it is there a big chance that it will explode?

xeijix says: Jun 3, 2008. 9:43 PM REPLY

no and yes. As I've said before (i think it was of the comments), you have to thoroughly test the battery like I've done. This actually decreases the chance
of explosion significantly because you would have personally tested the battery whereas manufacturers rely on batch testing. The more likely thing that
might happen (and even if it does happen, it's highly unlikely) is that the cells go bad and you can tell within a few recharges that the cells are bad; of
course nothing bad happens after the cell goes bad, you just have to replace them again

rak says: Jun 5, 2008. 7:46 PM REPLY

im going to try this in about 5 years, when i should already have a new laptop with one of those new experimental 40 hour nano tech batteries --
yahoo news

warlord says: Feb 28, 2008. 10:39 AM REPLY

Nice Instructable. Funny that I found this right when I was getting ready to order some new 18650's for my laptop, LOL.

Not all batteries are limited to multiples of how many cells are currently in your pack. My Dell has the option of 4 or 6 cells at 14.8v or 11.1V either have only
2 intermediary wires inside. The actual difference can be found in the calculated wH rating. 4cell =29wH 6cell=56wH

So, I'll be upgrading my 4cell 14.8 2,000mAh to a 6cell 11.1 5,000mAh monster. Of course, a little reasearch on what batteries are available for your
particular brand/model can help you out a lot with your configurations.

Also I didn't see any information about using protected cells which I would recommend.

nedfunnell says: Feb 20, 2008. 6:30 PM REPLY

Oh god, PLEASE be careful! I am not just safety mongering here, this is dangerous(not to mention a waste of money) except when special care is taken! The
smart board in your laptop is only used to having a known number of cells in parallel on a certain string, and these cells which are in parallel are very
carefully chosen for being matched- battery cells produced right after another in the same factory may not match, and so there's a special machine at the
factory to sort cells, matching them so that the cells in each string as as identical as possible. If this is not done, cells of even slightly different capacity will go
nuts and kill each other(this is how laptop batteries normally die, even when matched(in addition to wear/life)). So adding nice new fresh cells to old tuckered
out cells will DEFINATELY cause an imbalance. Why is this bad, other than short life? Because when there's one fresh cell giving the string voltage, the
smart board reads that voltage and things everything is dandy. In fact, there could be a weak cell there, dying and being overdischarged. Overdischarged
lithium batteries can and HAVE caught fire and exploded due to excessive discharge. In fact, I held a failed lithium battery in my hand today that was
dangerously overcharged and had only 20-30 cycles on it's life. Please, do NOT attempt to do the 'adding more batteries in a string' trick unless you use ALL
new batteries and match them carefully for voltage. Even then, you still might have serious problems. This is NOT a project for newbies! If you screw up and
your laptop catches fire, you'll be out the cost of this instructable, a laptop, and possibly whatever genitalia you had the laptop sitting unfortunately close to
when it went nuclear. BE CAREFUL! (Good instructable, BTW, but still very, very dangerous as posted, and inherently dangerous)

xeijix says: Feb 20, 2008. 7:30 PM REPLY

I'm pretty sure I specified that all cells should be new in addition to not mixing cells. Thanks for the extra reminder.

mattnico says: Jan 15, 2008. 7:23 AM REPLY

Does it matter if the cell size is the same as long as the capacity is greater than or equal to the current capacity? I've got an old Sony Vaio with the PCGA-
BP71 battery pack. The pack is made of 17670 Li-ion cells which are very hard to come by (and more expensive than other, more common cells). Would it
be fine to rebuild my pack with different cells of a greater capacity? Great Instructable! Thank you!

xeijix says: Jan 15, 2008. 8:18 AM REPLY

Nope, any physical cell size would do, as long as the material used is lithium-ion like your old pack. However, please note because of charging
characteristics, you MAY use li-poly cells if your original cells were li-ion, but you CAN'T use li-ion cells if your original cells were li-poly. However, I would
stick to cells made of the same material because even if you can use li-poly, it deteriorates it because of a slightly different charging characteristic. (oh,
btw, the capacity can be less, but i doubt anyone would want that, lol.) If you've noticed klee27x's comment, you may use different cells WITH the same
capacity to each other but ultimately a GREATER capacity to your original cells, but you have to be careful with how it's paired together. Thus, i suggest
buying the battery cells in bulk

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/
 klee27x says: Jan 13, 2008. 6:50 AM REPLY
Suggestion: perhaps I'm mistaken, but it looks like you have attached each three cell battery in parallel with one power and one ground lead. This invites
potential damage to all remaming 5 cells when one of the cells eventually dies. Connect each cell in parallel, to make a battery of three "double-size" cells.
This keeps each cell working in sync, better, and it also minimizes the damage when a cell dies. It's sister cell may suffer some damage before you discover
the problem, but the other 4 cells can be salvaged. As for having each cell come from the same manufacturer and whatnot, well that's true. But if you have 2
sets of different cells, just parallel one of each together, so each double-cell has one cell from each manufacturer tied together.

view all 91 comments

http://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-the-capacity-runtime-of-your-laptop-bat/