How to reset battery protection?

[ginbot86]

As far as resetting, can anyone give me a rough time frame on how long I should need to "jump start" one battery from the other before it resets? Ballpark? 10 secs, 30 secs, 2 mins? I don't want to short myself or burn something up

Depending on the cell voltage itself, it should usually be a second or so to reactivate the protection circuit. If you leave it on further, you're basically charging the 'dead' cell with another one.

When a fully discharged Li-Ion cell is allowed to relax for a while, its voltage will settle to 3.0 to 3.3 volts per cell. Some protection circuits will auto-reset at this voltage, but most that I've seen won't reactivate until an external charge current is supplied.

 

[SilverFox]

Hello Stormstaff,

If it doesn't reset after a couple of seconds contact it would appear that there is more wrong with the cell and protection circuit. That turns it into a crap cell and needs to be recycled.

Tom

 

[Stormstaff]

Thanks all. Looks like I have a junk cell.

 

[Bullzeyebill]

i've had good luck putting a "dead" cell in another charger, a charger that is not too sensitive.

Bill

 

[lightseeker2009]

I bought my son a small RC rock climber. It uses 6AA batteries. When the alkalines, that it came with went dead, I used 2X 14500's with spacers to power the truck. After just two minutes or so it just stopped dead. Upon inspection, the one 14500 gave a voltage of 4.06V, the other one was 0.00V. seems the truck draw too much power and the protection circuit kicked in.

All I did was to put it in my cheap charger for 5 seconds, as I was scared it would go poof. I took it out and it measured 4.03V, so the protection circuit was resetted merely by putting it in a charger.

 

[Marten]

Just as a matter of interest. I received a Trunight Neutron 1C from a supplier last year, with a "dead" Ultrafire in the tube. As I assumed that the protection had kicked in, and being inquisitive, I placed it in my Pila IBC charger. Although I could only get it up to about 3.8v (I assume that this cell had basically reached its life cycle or had been damaged), the charger was able to reset the circuit.
This cell was obviously discarded afterwards.

 

[bobx]

Hello guys,

I just wanted to let you know my woes, and what I am doing to try and solve the problem.


I bought 4x UltraFire 6000mAh (blue) 26650's for my 4-battery A-LETO LED flashlight. I pre-charged all the batteries on a Nitecore D4 (which has 4 smaller slots, but 2 large batteries can be charged without problems). All was great, lots of power on that Flashlight.
Then one night I had to re-thread my winch in my 4x4, and I decided to use the flashlight as a lightsource. I was fiddling around for like 45 minutes, and then the light started slowly fading. Eventually, after 10 more minutes it faded completely. Since I don't know much about Li-ion batteries, I had no clue that you should not under-charge them under a certain voltage. I am used to the old NiCads where you depleted them totally on purpose, so they could take a full charge.

Anyway, took the batteries out, and one of them read 0.00 volts, and would not charge. I didn't know about the voltage protection, so I stashed it into the "dead battery" bag. So, I went and bought 2 Trustfire 5000mAh (they are black and red and gold), and decided to put in 2 and 2 into the flashlight.
After another day at home cleaning under the kitchen, the same thing happened. Took them out, and voilla, another one of the UltraFire 6000mAh is dead.

And that's when I arrived at this thread here.

I am trying jumpering now, i.e. using a charged battery to "wake up" the dead ones. But so far zippo. I am measuring the voltage of the jumpered pair every few mins, and it still reads 4.16v . One would expect, IF the dead one would actually charge up, to lower the total voltage of the pair to some average.

So, I suspect neither of the dead batteries can be recovered. They are like an open circuit, i.e. 0.00v

Time to send the batteries to the manufacturer, painted as sticks of TNT with an old russian TIMEX wired to them ?

LOL

 

[SubLGT]

Hello guys,

I just wanted to let you know my woes, and what I am doing to try and solve the problem.


I bought 4x UltraFire 6000mAh (blue) 26650's ……………………………... I went and bought 2 Trustfire 5000mAh (they are black and red and gold)……………………………...

Your experience confirms the advice I have read on CPF multiple times : don't buy batteries with "fire" in their brand name.

 

[Bullzeyebill]

You have got to read some of the stickies in this thread, and other threads in this forum that discuss Li-ion batteries. There are alot of well done reviews regarding rechargeable Lithium batteries.

Bill

 

[Norm]

I've added this to the first post in this thread for easy reference - Norm

Sounds like the protection got tripped. If your charger is an i4/i2 or similar, it will not reset the protection (not true, read below), but HKJ's famous hotwire action should:
(Edit: only do this for a few seconds at most!)

(This assumes you still have one working, charged Li-ion battery.)

 

[lumen aeternum]

So how is this different from putting into the charger backwards? Other than you had better have a programmable charger so the amperage is low, and only leave it in there for a few seconds ????

 

[Norm]

So how is this different from putting into the charger backwards?

Where are you seeing to put the cell into the charger backwards?
You need to put it in as normal, not all chargers will reset cell protection.

Norm

 

[Othelzer]

I got a lot of 26650 batteries when radioshack closed
and half were under the battery protection limit

this is my first post so I was a navy trained diesel and gas turbine tech with
a minor in electronics and electricity im just a wrench not a sparky.


so I have been trying a week to charge the 26650's and it was not working

I came to the forum for ideas and the fist thing I learned is that a trickle charger is
totally useless if it has electronic battery tending

maybe a old school trickle charger would work but not the new ones
after trying a week to get these up, it dawned on me I had the
super electrician triple power supply with voltage and current adjustments
and over voltage and over and under current protection

I found half my 3500 ma hour 26650's were dead
and if one was dead the whole series would not charge

I had made a battery holder with 1 inch schedule 40 pvc pipe
and used a allthread with a 1/4 inch nuts on the inside to connect to ground
with some copper sheeting I had from a mouse intrusion build in the kitchen
just folded it into a square on top of the nuts in the tube for a ground

that is a grand start but I didn't have 6 volts for 4@26650's
I needed the master power supply I had hoarded some time back

the power supply could contour the amps and the volts
to give me the proper charge rate for the dead batteries
its all hand work no automation

one of the problems I had was a dead battery in a string of 4
i moved that battery closest to the positive terminal and bingo
it started charging , @ 1 amp @ 0.4 VDC above the starting voltage

now I can resurrect all the batteries down to 1 volt , I do not have any
that are more discharged to test.

thank you for all your help guys with my first li-ion cells
I am trying to use these in a small quad motorcycle
I believe I will need 2 or three banks of 4 to work
i'm tired to death of buying motorcycle batteries every year


I am working on a new project to use dollar store gorilla glass
to make the glass electrolyte batteries that they have just posted
to the news network..... I plan on using sodium sodium plates
and some form of borate on one side for the ion exchange
they claim the glass electrolyte can charge in 15 min or less
we will see Id love to make my basket case quad battery from scratch
and have it work and charge like that. Ill post if it works out well

but anyone can buy the glass now and join me in the cutting edge
of battery design

note there is a layer of sticky tape on gorilla glass
and gorilla glass the good stuff is already a borosilicate
which is exactly what you want,

a layer of boro-lithium or boro-sodium would be a good experiment

good luck sparkies

 

[IT_Architect]

I am working on a new project to use dollar store gorilla glass to make the glass electrolyte batteries that they have just posted to the news network..... I plan on using sodium sodium plates and some form of borate on one side for the ion exchange...Ill post if it works out well but anyone can buy the glass now and join me in the cutting edge of battery design note there is a layer of sticky tape on gorilla glass and gorilla glass the good stuff is already a borosilicate which is exactly what you want, a layer of boro-lithium or boro-sodium would be a good experiment

I'm incredibly interested in this but didn't find information like you are finding. All I found were some high-level articles about Goodenough.

 

[alabamaXL]

this method is probably not recommended, but it works to jump start the protection board on a couple of ultrafire batteries that I've had sitting around for much to long. I cut the shrink wrap away from the protection board and carefully slipped a wire underneath. you could also just tape a wire to the metal case of the battery, but be careful not to short out the lead that goes up the side to the positive terminal. I used a test clip/jumper wire to connect my wire to the negative terminal of a little XTAR MC-1 ant charger that I have and it lit right up. That charger can only do 500mA minimum charge, and Battery #1 that I tried this on started getting warm to the touch, so I pulled it off and put it in a MiBoxer C4 plus that monitors internal resistance and limits charge rate to 100mA if internal resistance is measuring high. Battery #1 is now charging nicely without the protection circuit bypassed(though very slowly!) without worrying heat build up. if the internal resistance ever comes down to a reasonable number, I'll consider using this cell.

The second one I'm doing now, it didn't seem to be warming up at all in the MC-1. This battery is now in the C4-plus, and also charging slowly through its protection board. Hopefully I'll get lucky and they'll both still be usable.

These measured about .25V between + and - terminals with pcb bypassed before I started charging. probably have permanent damage, so I don't recommend that others try this at home.

 

[alabamaXL]

Update: Cell #2, (both are ultrafire "880mAh 16340 protected cells) seems to be improving, and the internal resistance as measured on the charger is dropping, and charge current is rising slowly. this one might be salvagable. not holding out hope for the first one I tried this on, but I may loot the protection board for another salvaged cell that tests good but is unprotected if it doesn't perk up.

 

[ab1jx]

Very exciting. On Aliexpress there's a Uranusfire 20 watt flashlight which uses a pair of 18650 cells IN PARALLEL anyway. I have 3, just bought 4 more to give away as Christmas presents. Just popping a cell in there (wiith a good one) should reset it.

 

[ab1jx]

There's still quite a bit of intentional mystery around this. I went to 3 electronics companies (Mouser, Digi-key, Newark) and downloaded 10 datasheets from various companies about their 18650 cells. Most don't mention protection circuits at all. None gave any official method of how to reset them.

This is from an Ultralife datasheet:
Protection Circuit Module and Fuses: Over Voltage Limit 4.35 +/- 0.025 V, Under Voltage Limit 2.5 +/- 0.1 V, Over Discharge Current Limit 3.5 - 4.5 A.
Recommended charge rate is 466 ma to 4,2volts in a temperature range of 0 to 45 C. Hold at 4,2 volts until current declines to 50 ma. Maximum charge rate is 1.63 A @ 23 degrees C.

My first experience with it was when I absent-mindedly stuck a cell in a charger backwards and then the cell didn't work. I didn't plug the charger into the wall, it must just have a diode in there as reverse polarity protection. I've had a couple others trip as well so out of maybe 30 cells I have 3 that don't work anymore. I haven't thrown them out because they have 0 voltage, usually no continuity, it seems quite obvious that there's a blown fuse inside. I haven't tried opening one.