Repairing a Bad Cell in a Dewalt 60v Battery

Had a DeWalt 60v Battery go bad, a tear down discovered that one cell was bad, so I called Dewalt and they sent me a replacement, now I still have a bad battery. So why not try to fix it?! Purchased another 18650 lithium cell to replace the bad one in the pack. Soldering proved to be a little tricky, but seems to be working.
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[@steverodriguez2732]

If you attempt this repair, you need to be aware that installing a new cell, will likely cause the pack to fail. The cells should be balance by capacity as well. One last thing, the cells should be the same when being used in a high current drawing system. Not sure what sony cell you used, but the blue samsung cells that are in that pack are 30A discharge cells. Depending on the Sony you used, it may not be able to drain that amount of current, which will lead to overheating in that cell.

[@aartstaart8870]

yeah flux it dude...heating up the cells 3 times

[@pjbaldwin9643]

I have own and operated battery businesses for 15 years and rebuild power tool packs for a living and I have never once seen a battery that a cell is paralleled with another cell ...In series parallel like the dewalt 60v and not have 2 or more batteries bad. That would be very very rare to see only the one battery cell out of the pair go bad unless one of the paralleled batteries was disconnected from the spot weld not holding. I have a feeling there was another bad or weak cell in that battery pack. Next it is a MUST YOU EQUALIZE THE CELLs in the pack to the same voltage with a b6 (or any other brand) equalizer/charger/discharging unit before charging on the origanal dewalt charger. Just some helpful info I hope.

[@px421alpha5]

The cringe factor watching this is right up there...

[@minavabalajal1]

dewalt not sending anything without their mechanic have broken tool or battery checked. they have 1 year warranty when you have to send your garbage in. i have many broken tools and customer service do not care. no compensation, just waste time and money to get working tool. every time you have to send garbage tool back to get new working one.

[@JankyShack]

If you're going to solder these the best way is to use flux on the cell and put a bead of solder on the cell first. Then use the soldering iron to push the wire/nickle strip down onto the solder. Also 18650s have a huge variable range of capacity and output, its important to get the same battery make/model if possible. The best way to attach the nickel strips is a spot welder, that is how the factory does it.

[@jeremiahwhisler766]

20amp discharge new cell with 30amp discharge cells in the battery.

[@786otto]

Mini spot welder works a lot better on those.

[@LinoLaddr]

Reality those are 18V with 54V

[@bridoc519]

The original cell is a samsung 20S.

[@korishan]

Bigger solder tip would make a big difference. Solder on the cell "first" to put a contact pad, then put the silver tab down on the solder and reflow.

[@BP-bb4vg]

Wow that's lucky DeWalt pretty much told me to fock off, now I'm digging into Milwaukee no dead batteries yet!

[@chrisdickinson7949]

I hope your SODERING gets better, Unfortunately my soldering ( in Australia) isn't any better :( Cheers

[@TranTek]

That VTC5 is Sony /Muruta

[@b2600TurboDiesel]

Get some Flux and brush it on the cell and it will clean the surface of the for you and make the solder flow better

[@palopo23]

Hmm... I was at that moment just like you did on that battery.

[@krispy5139]

What was the voltage of the entire pack before replacing the bad cell?

[@walterbrueggemann3542]

I build battery packs all the time and when I first started off before I started spot welding them was I get a low temperature solder and a really hot soldering and iron and use tip tinner and put a little blob on the battery first then of tin the tab then a few seconds as soon as the solder liquified push down with wood stick until cooled then should be good solder

[@deankay4434]

Scuff, clean with electrical cleaner spray and use rosin type paste flux first, then add solder!