The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • Dell UG679 Lithium Battery Teardown

    The battery pack on my ancient Dell E1405 laptop finally died, so I tore it apart to see what horrors might lurk within:

    Dell UG679 Lithium Battery - teardown
    Dell UG679 Lithium Battery – teardown

    The case snaps apart without too much effort, although the delicate single-use latches won’t survive the operation. These certainly didn’t, which didn’t bother me at all, as I already had a replacement battery on order.

    One of the cells (in the front) seems to have leaked ever so slightly inside its wrapper:

    Dell UG679 Lithium Battery - leaky cell
    Dell UG679 Lithium Battery – leaky cell

    The three cells in that 3P section seem to have failed open: they pass no current at all.

    The other pair of 3P slices, charged at 4.2 V with a 700 mA current limit until the current dropped under 10 mA, still have some life:

    Dell UG679 3P sections
    Dell UG679 3P sections

    Perhaps recycling individual cells into LED glowies would be nice, as they have enough capacity remaining to run an Arduino for quite a while, and a 1S USB charger would make for a self-contained package.