Laptop battery

[bogart]

My Sony laptop battery is in a poor state, charge only lasts about 20 minutes, ie needs a replacement. Now prices are around the £50. Have the thought to go the DIY route. I've got access to L-ION cells and am considering opening up the old battery to see the state of how it is put together. Has anyone ever done this before? Plus I find it rather odd that the battery is listed as an 11.1V battery but the correct charger is rated at 19.6V, seems rather high to my mind.

Regards

[FatalSaviour]

My Sony laptop battery is in a poor state, charge only lasts about 20 minutes, ie needs a replacement. Now prices are around the £50. Have the thought to go the DIY route. I've got access to L-ION cells and am considering opening up the old battery to see the state of how it is put together. Has anyone ever done this before? Plus I find it ratehr odd that the battery is listed as an 11.1V battery but the correct charger is rated at 19.6V, seems rather high to my mind.

Regards

I am absolutely by no means an expert (or even at all knowledgeable!) in this field to be honest, but do you also not require a charging circuit for Li-Ion cells as well.

Also, my Dell battery is also rated at 11.1V, though the charger is 19.5V....I would assume this discrepancy allows the laptop to charge and run off of power at the same time?

Best of luck with whichever course of action you take

[DDY]

I've seen many articles where people have replaced the cells inside a laptop battery with varying success, some have reported battery life exceeding that of the original cells where others have only gained a few extra minutes.

So for I've not seen a case of the battery failing to work, destroying the computer or exploding after the mod, it's quite easy to do with a bit of soldering experience. There are a few good guides on the Internet on laptop battery modding, worth reading if you're interested.

The voltages of the charger and battery are sometimes different, I don't know why but the battery voltage and charger voltage don't always have to match. What really matters if you attempt this mod is to use exact, equivalent or superior cells to the original ones for your mod.

Good luck, hope you don't end up with lithium splattered everywhere!

[Maccer101]

Are there any cheaper options, ebay?

[bogart]

Hi guys thanks for the input. Have tried Ebay its just as expensive there. So off I will go and try and replace the dud cells with new ones, its worth a try as I have a lot of cells doing nothing . Will let you know the outcome.

[Pob255]

I seem to remember that one of the problems is that due to variations within cells and there manufactoring process it means you need to uses all the same cells from the same batch, you cannot just swap out one or two, or take one or two from different sources and make one battery unit out of it.

well you can but due to the differences within them the charge will degrade very quickly and can lead to other instabilities with in the battery unit.
Basically there's a reason they are so expensive.

count your self lucky, the replacement cost of the battery for my old hp armarda is around £90

[arthurleung]

When I was back in Hong Kong there are shops that offered Lithium battery cell replacements. Yes, they're replacing the cells inside. They do it on the spot, I remember a 6 cell battery cost about 45 quids to replace.

But you will definitely get some fresh cells unlike some "Original" batteries that sat in the warehouse for a year or two before you get it, and there will be like 80% capacity left.

[hyenus]

i would take great care as the power (and heat) that can be generated by these things if they get shorted is immense ... for me anyway i would buy a clone battery from a rep. source as i have zero electronics skills :-(

[bogart]

Got a set of new cells and bingo everything is fine.

[GoNz0]

what the time remaining like then?

[bogart]

Original which was a tad useless gave about 20 mins this one gives well over 90 mins not bad for a 17in screen. Was actually cheaper to buy a cheap battery from Hong Kong and swap the cells over. Was quite surprised to see the cells marked Made in Japan thought would have been cheap chinese ones.