New consulting relationship with GreenTecAuto begins
What actually goes wrong with the batteries????
A look at todays Hybrid and EV battery packs
Battery packs exposed
2006 and up civic packs
Lead acid battery failure examined
Testing the sticks at the cell level
MaxIMA stick full discharge
Bumblebee battery replacements for the stock subpacks
Inside the cells
Seprating the cells for reuse
How it is wired
PTC strips exposed
The PTC thermistors
Battery current sensor
Inside the 100A semiconductor battery pack fuse
Did it again for the last time
A bad Prius subpack explored and fixed????
Rebalancing the Insight battery?
Insight battery
Insight Battery switching/current monitoring
The battery controller
Prius battery pack
State Of Charge (SOC) determination with NIMH batteries
Battery pack monitoring
What happens to a Prius subpack when you overcharge it?
Keeping Warm In New England
Plugging into the SUN
Making a small solar concentrator
Building MIMA and the plug in adapters
Converting a telephone truck to electric
DIY dual pulse Capacitor Discharge Spotwelder
Chevy Bolt EV joins the family
Getting in shape while making electricity
Retirement
Replacing gasoline with solar electric lawn equipment
What is Genesis One?
How to stop the aging process DIY
MIMA Install Day 2005 a Big Success!
Building a hybrid car grid charger
Tapping into the Wind
Expanding MIMA with the Distribution board ( users projects )

Inside the cells

Inside the cells
Insight 6.5AH cell inside

Ok now that I have a good electrical test fixture and have identified a cell that was shorted, recovered, but not back to full capacity, it is time to take a look at the insides of the cell.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the really nice welds. they are deep, show little discoloration in the heat effected zone,with no surface oxides, so they were probably done in an inert gas. The welds were so strong that the sheet metal tore rather than the weld separating.
I made a test fixture to see how much force it would take to "crack" the stick at the cell to cell boundary. Amazingly I was not able to break the welds, even up the the 300 lb max that the scale would take. I had to bend it back and forth 4 or 5 times to get the welds to break out of the metal.
I sanded of the weld stubs, and put the cell in a vice to drain out all the energy.
I turned the cell in my lathe and cut off the top.
The top inner welds were also solid, but I was a bit surprised to find that the top terminal and bottom terminals were simply pressed into the spiral wound plate.The cell must have been assembled in a press to give adiquate contact pressure. I carefully unwrapped the perforated nickle strips which measure about 24 inches. I looked at the plates and separator blotter material, and saw no signs of holes or burned areas(Capacitor Zapp), so this somewhat supports that the capacitor discharge did not blow any holes.Very interesting.