[HN Gopher] Indonesia's e-bike shops are building their own batt...
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Indonesia's e-bike shops are building their own batteries
Author : donohoe
Score : 153 points
Date : 2024-03-20 11:20 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| infecto wrote:
| I don't know Indonesian import law but I would guess that this
| guy making batteries for his local business might have better
| quality than what I assume is the alternative, imported Chinese
| batteries. I wonder why so much concern over safety. I would be
| much more concerned about Chinese imported batteries since you
| don't always have a brand name and QC.
| WJW wrote:
| > since you don't always have a brand name and QC
|
| Some guy DIY-ing batteries in his shop is pretty much the
| epitome of "no brand name and QC" though. Seriously, look at
| some of the pictures in the article. Those botched together
| mains wires alone look like a fire risk.
|
| Quite apart from the circumstances of their creation, the
| homemade battery packs themselves can also be quite unsafe as
| some/most shops use any secondhand cells they can get their
| hands without regards for discharge ratings etc. That sort of
| imbalance can easily lead to fires during use, which is
| obviously not great when the driver is in busy traffic at the
| time.
| adql wrote:
| > Those botched together mains wires alone look like a fire
| risk.
|
| There is nothing inherently unsafe with bolting power strip
| onto the wall.
|
| > Quite apart from the circumstances of their creation, the
| homemade battery packs themselves can also be quite unsafe as
| some/most shops use any secondhand cells they can get their
| hands without regards for discharge ratings etc. That sort of
| imbalance can easily lead to fires during use, which is
| obviously not great when the driver is in busy traffic at the
| time.
|
| Not reading the article before yapping your mouth eh ?
|
| > Ady Siswanto, owner of e-bike workshop Dyvolt in Jakarta,
| told Rest of World he takes care to match the internal
| resistance and capacity of the cells.
|
| Most of the "serial DIYes" know that just fine, as it is
| blindingly obvious in performance of batteries and if you're
| making it a business you'd not have many returning
| customers... except ones returning for a return.
|
| And let's not pretend name-brand packs don't have "accidents"
| infecto wrote:
| He works under his own brand though, I would argue that
| batteries made by the guy down the street have a higher brand
| awareness than "COCO" batteries which might also sell under
| name "BOBO", "AOAO", "AKKO", "LMYW", etc.
|
| I am only pointing out that I would be concerned regardless
| of the source, chinese or local but suspect the local guy has
| a greater incentive to maintain his brand than the imported
| brand from china.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| > Seriously, look at some of the pictures in the article.
| Those botched together mains wires alone look like a fire
| risk.
|
| I'm guessing you haven't been to Indonesia. This style of
| wiring is common in businesses and homes in Indonesia,
| Thailand and lot of poorer asian countries. The regulations
| are weak or unenforced. Often unlicensed people build houses,
| run power, water etc.
|
| It's (probably unintentionally) dishonest to judge this by a
| first world standard.
| jpgvm wrote:
| > better quality than what I assume is the alternative,
| imported Chinese batteries.
|
| You do realise that China makes some of the worlds best
| batteries right?
|
| There is a reason why BYD, EVE and CATL are in the news all the
| time and it's not because they suck.
|
| Quality wise Chinese/Korean/Japanese batteries are all pretty
| much the same on NCA/NCM chemistries. China has a big advantage
| in LFP but LFP is shitty for an e-bike because the reduced
| density penalty is much more meaningful than in a car.
|
| Those companies make cells of course but there is also plenty
| of high quality BMS available and fully assembled batteries out
| of China too obviously.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| China also makes some of the worlds worst batteries. (Source:
| all the products I had to return after 1 or fewer successful
| charges.)
| prmoustache wrote:
| They are doing exactly what the advocates of free market
| dream of. You want to pay as little as possible, you get
| the crappiest stuff, you are willing to pay more to get top
| quality, you get good stuff.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| In many product categories there is no top stuff, just
| keep buying the crap stuff until you find the specimen
| that works. Maybe "keep repeating" is a proxy for free
| market goodness, I can honestly not tell anymore. :-D
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| That would be fine if there was a way to differentiate
| crap from not crap. Price is a signal, but an
| increasingly shitty one in that I can pay a high price
| and still receive crap.
|
| The free market is happy to sell me crap at high prices
| with no ability to know that until the deal is
| irreversible.
|
| The theoretical free market also has perfect information,
| and the current markets actively work to obscure that.
| tokai wrote:
| They are having huge issues with e-bike fires in China. Here
| you have an article with two Chinese researchers weighing in
| on the issue.[0] According to them low quality batteries are
| the reason for the number of deadly fires.
|
| So yes, Chinese ebike batteries are on a whole of low
| quality.
|
| [0] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1013638
| gaadd33 wrote:
| Given the numbers cited there it looks like Chinese e-bikes
| have a fire rate of 0.002391% per year. From a quick search
| it seems like there were about 130 e-bike fires in NYC in
| 2022 out of a population of about 65000 e-bikes, so NYC
| based e-bikes have a failure rate of 0.2% per year which
| seems significantly worse than the cheap ones used
| throughout China.
| tokai wrote:
| Did you read what the experts said? It doesn't matter if
| the incident rate is higher in NYC, anything about NYC
| has no bearing on this. The fires in china are due to low
| quality batteries.
| akgerber wrote:
| I don't think there has been any sort of reliable survey
| on the quantity of ebikes in NYC, and 65,000 is likely to
| be extremely low. There is no registration or point-of-
| sale reporting requirement.
|
| There are also large quantities of unregistered electric
| and gasoline mopeds and motorcycles, many of which are
| also labeled as ebikes by either their
| manufacturers/importers or public authorities when
| involved in an incident.
|
| One can purchase custom-made ebike batteries in NYC from
| shops similar to the one in this article, often with
| substantially worse finishing/packaging quality and
| unknown BMS quality. And said batteries are often run
| hard in delivery service in 4-season conditions,
| including exposure to temperatures well below freezing
| and salty slush spray, then charged via chargers and
| cords of unknown quality plugged into what are often pre-
| WWII electrical systems.
|
| The FDNY is appropriately raiding custom battery shops in
| NYC, since there doesn't seem to be an appropriate
| regulatory system yet for custom-manufacturing this sort
| of energy storage device in a dense urban environment
| yet: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-
| boroughs/news/2024/02/09/queens-biz-...
| infecto wrote:
| Do you really think these bicycle batteries are being powered
| by BYD? Like I said I don't know the their market well but if
| its similar to other markets in the region, they are
| importing low quality generic branded stuff that may be worse
| off than those local manufacturer who have a real incentive
| to try to product higher quality products.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Do you really think there are tons of dodgy Chinese
| companies producing battery cells? A notoriously
| technically difficult, capital intensive and above all
| massively competitive business with tiny margins unless you
| are running the absolute best process at enormous scale?
|
| No. There is just a handful of companies producing cells at
| reasonable scale and cost. Pretty much every cell you can
| buy from Alibaba (which is almost certainly where these
| e-bike pack makers are buying from) come from just 7
| companies: CATL, BYD, EVE, CALB, Gotion, Sunwoda and
| Farasis.
|
| All of these companies make high quality cells and these
| are definitely the only ones with a good enough
| price/performance to shove in a hand-made e-bike pack and
| make a profit.
|
| This notion that Chinese batteries are somehow bad is
| ludicrous and the lengths people go to state as fact
| something they clearly have no experience with is
| intellectual dishonesty at best.
| infecto wrote:
| I can see you are very passionate on this topic. I did
| not realize in the article that these shops were actually
| making individual cells but the rather the complete pack.
| My notion was that the complete pack may be safer than
| complete packs coming from china under generic fake
| names. Thanks for clearing it up. You clearly have a lot
| of experience in this area with incredible honesty but
| low capability at following thoughts.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The fact is that there are demonstrably under-specced
| batteries being sold.
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMZuHMlRw_0&t=579s)
|
| Is this just a case of people buying reputable batteries
| and selling them under their own brand name with higher
| specs? If so, why do these 7 manufacturers make bad
| batteries?
|
| Clearly there are plenty of badly made cells out there,
| so I think I'm misunderstanding something.
| akgerber wrote:
| The quality of individual cells does not necessarily have
| any bearing on the safety of the finished
| battery/BMS/charger.
| infecto wrote:
| Never suggested otherwise.
| tantalor wrote:
| Packs, battery packs.
|
| This is very common for DIY ebikes.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It _used_ to be that one assembled batteries of cells. But
| language changes I suppose.
| zdragnar wrote:
| In this case, each cell is also a standalone battery (an 1850
| I presume). Assemblage of these is either called a module or
| a pack.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| An 18650 is a single cell. (Or a _battery_ in modern
| parlance.) Now, get off my lawn! :-D Just kidding! The
| terminology shifted. But a cell used to be the single unit
| of chemistry and catode and anode that gives the native
| voltage. So an 18650 would be a cell. A 1.5V alkaline would
| be a cell. A 9V alkaline would be a battery of six cells!
| And so on.
|
| I'm not saying it's _wrong_ nowadays to say an 18650 is a
| battery.
| samatman wrote:
| Not even disagreeing with you, but it's a funny evolution of
| language when you consider the origin of the term battery.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_battery
|
| We owe the term to Benjamin Franklin, who used it to describe
| what you're referring to as a pack (although Leyden jars are
| considered capacitors rather than batteries in modern terms).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_battery#Invention
| ginko wrote:
| There's a small youtube channel[1] I follow where a guy I think
| is from Indonesia builds his own handheld coil guns and railguns
| including his own charging circuit designs. Pretty crazy/fun
| stuff. There seems to be quite a bit of an electronics hacking
| scene going on there.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@DNAP460/videos
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| From the pictures I get the sense this guy knows what he's doing.
| Sure his shop's a little dusty, and that fume extractor is maybe
| a little ghetto (better than my aquarium filter duct taped to a
| fan though).
|
| It's hard to tell what those grey cells are being used in the
| pack, which is probably most important factor, but the
| construction of it appears solid. It's also evident from photo
| that he is disassembling a damaged pack. See the missing row of
| cells at the top, and corrosion on the bottom in this photo:
| https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/202...
| jpgvm wrote:
| They look like standard 1865 cells but obviously not high
| enough res to spot the manufacturer. I would imagine EVE
| though. CATL is too hard to get a hold of but EVE Grade A is
| still pretty easily available from Alibaba.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| EVE would be my guess too, possibly INR18650-35V, which seems
| totally cromulent for an ebike.
|
| EVE cells are also used in newer Ryobi power tools, it's
| worth pointing out: https://www.reddit.com/r/ryobi/comments/o
| xn53g/psa_ryobi_is_...
| dallasg3 wrote:
| Simpsons did it.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| https://jacquesmattheij.com/long-range-ebike/
|
| Not the only ones!
| samstave wrote:
| I was super envious of this when he first posted it here...
|
| However - I bought a ~7,000 e-bike and I love/hate it:
|
| I have an Orbea Rise H30 - and its ~36 lbs. The problem is that
| the magnets in the motor are always engaged - meaning that even
| when the bike is 'off' I am fighting against the magnets - and
| it governs me and when off, no matter how hard I pedal - I cant
| get about 11 miles an hour.
|
| It is a type 2 - so it is not supposed to boost you passed 20
| miles an hour - but instead it effectively governs you to 20
| mph. Its very hard to get it much faster - the fastest I have
| gotten to is 24.5 mph. Downhill.
|
| However - when the battery is powered - its great, except you
| have to only keep it on BOOST which is the highest of three
| settings (eco, trail, boost)
|
| I'd not buy this bike again. It range is really around ~30
| miles - and they have a range booster battery pack for $600 -
| and I should have bought that when I had the money to throw at
| it... but yeah the bike sucks when the battery dies.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| On my bike, I found that disconnecting the battery made the
| magnets spin freely.
| akgerber wrote:
| I have a Shimano middrive bike that weighs 50lbs that I
| purchased on closeout for $1500. It rides like a nice, albeit
| heavy, bike with the motor turned off.
| smallpipe wrote:
| Are those LiPo or LiIon? The articles mention both, and the image
| looks like LiIon
| babl-yc wrote:
| Photos are showing Li-ion 18650 cells afaict
|
| Those are the most common for e-bike batteries
| Havoc wrote:
| Various YouTubers do similar to build effectively Tesla
| powerwalls
|
| It seems quite risky even for those that are careful. I recall
| one of the bigger channels ending up eating humble pie when they
| had a fire.
|
| Not something I'd ever want to do unless I could house in in an
| outdoor shed quite far away from everything else
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| I keep thinking Ripperdocs in Cyberpunk world. Looks dodgy
| alright, but it's in their best interest to not screw up because
| I know in Indonesia "homemade" usually literally means made at
| home, and houses in Indonesia typically share walls between
| adjoining houses, so if you burn your house your neighbors will
| not be happy.
| zevv wrote:
| Question I have: is it just a bunch of cells wired up, or is
| there a BMS (battery management system) in there doing the things
| you need to do to make a battery safe and make it last: cell
| balancing is essential to make sure the pack will survive more
| then a few charges and rides before it will kill itself. Also I
| would not like a battery pack that does not switch itself off
| when voltages or currents get too high, which is a great way to
| start a thermal runaway. Not a safety issue, but important to
| make sure the battery is not abused is to prevent deep discharge
| voltage or charging the battery at too low temperature.
| russellbrandom wrote:
| Hi -- editor of the piece here. There is a BMS, that's the main
| other component aside from the cells. We had that detail
| initially but it got cut for space.
| holoduke wrote:
| Cheap active bms systems. Could be hazardous as well. But
| needed for charging from a 48v charger block.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Wow this is scary. LiPo are very dangerous and even NMC which are
| stabler are very error prone when assembled in an ebike pack: the
| cells need to be high quality (LG, Panasonic), the assembly need
| to be very careful (so many ways for the interconnects to become
| a liability and cause a fire) the BMS needs to be quality (or
| it'll overheat and cause a fire). It's hard to make it right when
| careful, and even decently sized companies mess it up.
|
| Slapping together some LiPo? It's just a matter of when, not if.
|
| Recently published very relevant talk by Grin:
| https://youtu.be/j92Gt4VviSQ?si=0TV_HqZBEBuVDqdx
|
| Otherwise I think these things are super cool, but in the case of
| lithium ebike batteries, they look so innocent and easy to build,
| and are so dangerous. I'm speaking from being humbled myself
| after building two NMC packs with cell-fuses, a spot welder,
| being careful... I'm dead scared of my packs.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Wow this is scary._
|
| Not really.
|
| _LiPo are very dangerous and even NMC which are stabler_
|
| LiPo refers to lithium polymer, which doesn't mean a different
| chemistry. It means "polymer electrolyte instead of a liquid
| electrolyte".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_polymer_battery
|
| _are very error prone when assembled in an ebike pack_
|
| There are billions of 18650 battery packs out there now in
| general.
|
| _the cells need to be high quality (LG, Panasonic)_
|
| No, the cells need have their specs correct and the packs need
| to be built according to cells' specs.
|
| _the BMS needs to be quality (or it 'll overheat and cause a
| fire)._
|
| The BMS is there to limit things like discharge voltage, charge
| voltage, discharge amps, etc. It makes things safer.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| You may think so, and I encourage you to watch the video I
| shared. I held many of the same conclusions/approximations
| until learning of Grin's experience.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| The video you linked is problems that can happen and things
| that can go wrong. It seems more like something the battery
| makers should watch instead of proof that batteries are
| inherently unsafe.
| geor9e wrote:
| They aren't slapping LiPos together. They aren't even using
| LiPos. LiPo are usually single small cells pouches in phones
| and gizmos. These are Li-Ion 18650 cells like Samsung 50e's
| being nickle spot welded into ~60V arrangements, with every
| 4.2V "p-pack" getting a wire to the Battery Management System
| circuit board. All charge and discharge does thru the approval
| of the BMS and gets cut off if any cell shows anything abnormal
| (short, too much resistance (voltage dipping), undervolted,
| overvolted). The photos look just as professionally made as
| another other factory. Unwrap literally any random e-bike's
| battery and you'll find identical construction. A few rare
| brands also pot the battery in thermal epoxy to make them even
| more safe. Yes fire and liability are scary for battery pack
| builders but this guys shop doesn't appear to be doing anything
| bad.
| treprinum wrote:
| Why not use LiFePO4? Those should be much more stable.
| stonogo wrote:
| Power density is much lower. On a vehicle you have to pedal
| one the power is out, weight savings matters.
| holoduke wrote:
| I am building similar battery packs for long range uavs. We
| have many different configurations. Like 12s24p. 48v with total
| of 252 4.2v cells. We put them in 3d printed holders and
| spotweld them. Takes about 30 minutes to make one battery. Bms
| systems are available widely. Its rare to have dangerous
| issues. Even with chinese clones. Most of the accidents
| happening when nickel strips are cut and accidentally falling
| on open battery packs.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Note that while the article says "soldering" the pictures show
| "welding", which is the typical way you create battery packs. The
| reasons are that the welding provides a higher temperature
| connection but for a shorter period of time, over all dumping
| less heat into the battery and potentially causing damage to the
| cell or triggering ignition. Also makes a higher temp connection,
| solder can melt when the joints get hot during use.
|
| I got a battery welder a few years ago to repair an ebike pack
| and also to repair a EGO power tool battery pack, but thus far
| haven't used it. The ebike pack was a bunch of "packets" rather
| than 18650 cells, and the EGO was slightly smaller than 18650, so
| I need to wait for another pack to fail so I can scavenge cells
| from one to repair the other.
|
| Be careful if it smells like birthday cake when you're working
| with lion cells, that can preclude them bursting into flames.
| Have a metal container nearby to drop them into for transport
| outdoors.
| mhb wrote:
| preclude: I think you mean that can be a prelude to. Though
| could also be presage.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I think I was going for "precedes".
| mhb wrote:
| Ah. That makes sense.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> Have a metal container nearby to drop them into for
| transport outdoors._
|
| Before doing that, try watching some experiments with fireproof
| containers specifically designed for these fires, to have an
| idea how quick and violent this can be, and how bad most of
| these containers are at preventing it from going from 0 to
| inferno or to a toxic cloud suffocating you in seconds. This
| might or might not help you plan for the worst case, or better
| yet forget about doing DIY battery pack repairs at all.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > forget about doing DIY battery pack repairs at all.
|
| Yah, some things it's best to not learn the hard way.
|
| But if you're intent on doing it, to it outside on a concrete
| slab.
| WalterBright wrote:
| P.S. I do anything that involves fumes or dust outside,
| such as painting, solvents, etc.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| What do people do in factories?
|
| I'm skeptical of the idea that some repairs are meant to be
| performed only by "experts" and that nobody should ever try
| to learn how to make them. It fuels an industry of people
| charging hundreds or thousands of dollars per repair to
| install cheap parts, and it's part of the reason our society
| throws so much stuff away.
|
| Sure lithium ion packs are dangerous, but there is a
| manufacturing process that: welds cells together to make
| banks, and that sometimes produces a runaway reaction inside
| the cells. Given that that's the case, it should be entirely
| possible to do that safely in a controlled environment inside
| of a garage.
|
| This is the same attitude that informs our decision not to
| repair garage door springs. Or more relevantly the same
| attitude that tells us to just use whatever async library du
| jour exists but never to learn about the internals of that
| library. "Don't worry about what's under the hood, that's
| dangerous stuff" says the dealer's mechanic.
| elliottkember wrote:
| Do you perform your own dentistry?
| linsomniac wrote:
| Touche.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| It's not the same thing because I don't have training to
| be a dentist, but I do have training and skills and
| knowledge for a variety of non-dentist mechanical,
| electrical, and electronic things. So this is a specious
| argument. Where does it end? Do I not do any work myself
| ever? Or are there things we can all agree some people
| are capable of doing?
|
| I think the gatekeeping around all of this stuff from
| people is frankly kind of ridiculous. It's not like the
| battery repairmen are doing asbestos abatement naked in
| their living rooms while their families are watching TV.
| But people are treating it like the same thing.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Capability is fine but also goes hand in hand with risk.
| Working on lipo/li-ion cells is risky which is usually
| why such work is not zoned for residential areas. How
| would your skills and training translate into something a
| neighbor or inspector can understand? Would you resent
| them for questioning your non-dentist abilities? Is
| someone with no formal training but years of practical
| knowledge working on devices enough?
|
| It seems like the questions from my end bend back toward
| proving yourself when a situation breaks, not when it
| works, which is what sometimes happens when you do work
| yourself. Have you heard the parable of the nuclear boy
| scout, David Hahn?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I do have training and skills and knowledge for a
| variety of non-dentist mechanical, electrical, and
| electronic things.
|
| A fundamental of expertise is knowing the terrain, what
| you can and can't do safely and reliably. A fundamental
| of knowledge is becoming aware of far more that you don't
| know; only in ignorance do we imagine there is little
| outside our personal boundaries.
|
| Highly experienced professionals will tell me, 'I don't
| know how to do that, you should talk to ...', and will
| refuse to even venture advice. My doctor tells me to talk
| to a specialist. Naive, immature amatuers assure me they
| can do anything, and can diagnose and treat my medical
| condition via social media.
| fragmede wrote:
| Don't you? When there's something wrong in your mouth, do
| you look in the mirror, use your tongue on it, use a
| toothbrush or floss or toothpick on the problem before
| going to see the dentist? Or do you feel pain in your
| mouth and magically you're at the dentist without doing
| any of the above?
| cogman10 wrote:
| I don't bust out the drill or try to apply putty for a
| temporary tooth.
|
| That is to say, yes, I can confidently exchange batteries
| (clean my teeth). I'm not confident in modifying those
| batteries with a welder/soldering iron.
|
| If I clean my teeth and they still hurt you bet I'm going
| to the dentist.
| K0balt wrote:
| Yes, sometimes, when it's not convenient to utilize
| infrastructure where I am.
|
| So far I have become adept at removing and replacing my
| own crown, including heavily modifying when needed,
| filling if they aren't too deep (or temporary fillings if
| they are deep) and one extraction when I was at sea and
| had no better choice.
|
| I don't recommend it if it's not necessary, but for those
| who may find themselves in that situation there is a book
| called "where there is no dentist" that outlines most
| common procedures and tool use. It's worth learning if
| you're likely to be away from "civilization ". Also
| "where there is no doctor " can be a lifesaver.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| You extracted your own tooth!? Woah. Speaking as someone
| who has seen people evacuated from Antarctica for dental
| issues, I'd like to read a blog post or something about
| that.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> What do people do in factories?_
|
| Ventilation. Compartmentalization. Controlled processes
| with early warnings. Proper tools. Quality control. Active
| fire suppression. Not doing that at home with your wife,
| kids, and your dog.
|
| Sure, if you know what you're doing, can deal with thermal
| runaway, and can trust your work afterwards, nobody stops
| you from doing it. I've done it myself (never tried
| anything larger than a e-bike battery though). Just keep in
| mind that you're working with a firebomb that deceptively
| looks like an electronic device.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Not an ideal analogy. A better analogy is "would you hire
| an electrician to do task XYZ?" Nothing stopping you from
| learning enough to do amateur electrician work -- but at a
| certain point, the risk to reward ratio becomes poor for
| most people and not a good investment. At a certain point,
| you're doing it to sate your curiosity -- not an invalid
| motivation by any means, but it's not necessarily driven by
| practicality.
| linsomniac wrote:
| You say that, but it sure was nice, last year when my
| dryer kept popping the breaker, for me to be able to
| easily track down that the electrician that replaced my
| panel ~8 years ago had (a) used the wrong breaker for the
| dryer, (b) used a physically damaged breaker, and (c)
| improperly torqued one of the legs leading to the dryer.
|
| Learning DYI home maintenance is not for everyone, but I
| sure have enjoyed it. Being comfortable with so many
| aspects of my house is something I really like.
| nomel wrote:
| Breakers were design to be installed by the average Joe,
| as are drier legs. The failure mechanism of an improperly
| installed breaker is that it doesn't work properly, or it
| gracefully melts in a metal box which is required by
| law/code to handle that exact case of graceful melting
| and small plastic fires.
|
| The tools and technique required for dealing with stack
| of little fire bombs, that explode if poked, bent, or
| overheated, sometimes at a much later date, while sitting
| in your garage/living room, has a much more serious
| failure mechanism. And, more than that, most DIY battery
| packs I've seen involve lack of funds and Aliexpress
| cells. In the RC hobby community, everyone knows that you
| store DIY battery packs, especially those made with cheap
| Aliexpress cells, somewhere where they're free to
| spontaneously combust without consequence.
|
| Battery packs are scary. People who understand that have
| better outcomes [1] than people who don't [2] (tbf, these
| are Lipo)
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/fpv/comments/fb1u4d/thanks_r
| eddit_y...
|
| [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/fpv/comments/l1hegi/psa_dont
| _leave_...
| fragmede wrote:
| When there's actually dangerous stuff under the hood, maybe
| we should worry about it though. If piercing a cell with a
| screwdriver is going to cause a fire, and a runaway chain
| reaction could burn down your garage, maybe we should have
| a way to give mandatory training on how to handle things
| safely before you're allowed to play under the hood.
| dangles wrote:
| Why is the cost greater than the benefit?
| fragmede wrote:
| Because humans are bad at statistics, and don't want to
| waste money on hypotheticals. "It'll never happen to me."
| So you can skimp on the cost of safety training.
| to11mtm wrote:
| 'under the hood' is relative...
|
| Most vehicles are Skateboard platform anyway; I feel like
| you'd already have to be in at least a semi-specialized
| shop to even get to where you can safely FAFO with the
| pack...
|
| And frankly if a normal person manages to just 'get one'
| and put it in their garage well I don't know what to say
| aside from 'sometimes natural selection has factors'...
| fragmede wrote:
| I'd rather we be able to teach people so they're safe
| when they experience the FO part of thermal runaway. Hey,
| I really needed that bucket of sand.
|
| But I don't control what other people are doing, so, like
| you said, natural selection. The problem comes when that
| garage is adjacent to the neighbors garage, and it
| catches from there, that we do need to control what other
| people are doing.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Also, what do people do in RVs in the desert?
| morphle wrote:
| What people should do is not have flammable batteries in
| a vehicle unless the whole system, the entire RV or EV,
| has been designed by experts. I built custom designed
| safe solar starlink campers as whole systems and make
| physics simulations and do extensive tests. That is how
| you prevent most battery fire in a car or off-grid tiny
| house in a desert.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Ok how about a gas powered RV, a highschool chemistry
| teacher, and one of his former students, Jesse. I think
| that's enough expertise.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > I'm skeptical of the idea that some repairs are meant to
| be performed only by "experts"
|
| If you're skeptical of this very banal notion than you are
| likely not qualified to be doing whatever work you're
| doing. Yes, tons of technology is needlessly complicated
| and the salesmen and their compatriots in the "no user
| serviceable parts inside" sticker division have spent a lot
| of time and effort to convince people that the inside of
| electronic devices is sacrosanct; however that has led to
| an IMHO dangerous notion that _every_ instance of someone
| saying "hey, you really shouldn't take this apart on your
| home bench" is regarded with suspicion, or some notion of
| "they just want you to buy a new one!" and not that,
| sometimes things break and if they're designed well, they
| may well have a failure mode that prevents a _much worse
| failure mode._
|
| And it might be expertise that's the dividing line, but it
| could just as easily be a matter of the material itself:
| that sometimes, what's in there _is pretty fucking
| dangerous actually_ and shouldn 't be messed with by just
| any old guy, even a technical guy, who has a YouTube
| tutorial. It might be that the parts inside failed _for a
| reason_ and replacing them, while it makes whatever thing
| work again, might not actually be a great idea depending on
| _why the original ones failed_ and that if you don 't know
| the answer to that question, blindly putting them back
| might be setting you up for something disastrous.
|
| I'm 100% a believer in the right to repair, but I do not
| mean for that always to be _myself._ On the rare occasion I
| take something apart with lithium cells inside (which I
| avoid at all costs!), I handle them like live grenades and
| either re-connect them to whatever managing circuitry or,
| if whatever it is is beyond fixing, disposing of them
| safely. I don 't do this because I don't understand them: I
| know intimately how they work. I do this _because_ I
| understand them and respect the danger they pose, not
| unlike firearms or the parts of my car that I know I don 't
| know enough and am not qualified to fix.
|
| Being intelligent is, IMO, oftentimes more about knowing
| what you _don 't know_ and respecting that than knowing
| what you know.
|
| And, as an aside just because it's related to this point
| I've articulated: do not take apart lithium batteries in an
| apartment. I don't give a shit what your qualifications are
| or how good your risk assessment might be, you do not have
| the right to take into your hands the safety of yourself
| and at the same time, _every other person currently
| occupying the structure you inhabit._ That is just not your
| risk to accept, full stop. You are not an island and all
| the high minded libertarian nonsense you can muster cannot
| get around the fact that if you make a mistake, no matter
| how benign in the moment, you could damn well set other
| people 's homes on fire with zero warning for them.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I'm skeptical of the idea that some repairs are meant to
| be performed only by "experts" and that nobody should ever
| try to learn how to make them.
|
| That is a very dangerous point of view. Many things really
| are too dangerous and require too much expertise for you to
| do. That's how and why expertise exists - it's required to
| accomplish certain tasks. Not everything - not nearly
| everything - can be done by amatuers.
|
| It's dangerous to you and also to people around you. The
| flaming lithium ion cell can kill lots of other people, or
| leave them in horrible pain and permanently disfigured with
| burns, or destroy lifetimes of memory and property.
|
| What will you tell them? 'I thought I could do it'? Why did
| you try when everyone told you it was too dangerous? '...'
|
| > there is a manufacturing process that: welds cells
| together to make banks, and that sometimes produces a
| runaway reaction inside the cells. Given that that's the
| case, it should be entirely possible to do that safely in a
| controlled environment inside of a garage.
|
| Not unless you have millions of dollars invested in design
| (by experts trained and experienced in designing such
| facilities), equipment, and construction for your garage.
| And it's not near any neighbors - they don't put those
| factories in residential neighborhoods.
| analog31 wrote:
| >>>> What do people do in factories?
|
| Move the factories to places that have fewer labor
| protections, or...
|
| Charge more for their products.
| morphle wrote:
| I design big custom battery packs in car trailers or shipping
| containers for storing them outside of infrastructure. If the
| battery catches fire you can drag the trailer or shipping
| containers further away to let it burn out. Of course it gets
| harder to drag them away after a few minutes of fire when the
| axles and wheels start to melt.
|
| The point is to never put Lithium-ion batteries inside
| buildings, especially not put them inside heavy (metal) boxes
| bolted to the building.
| lproven wrote:
| > The point is to never put Lithium-ion batteries inside
| buildings
|
| Missing word?
|
| Because I have dozens of 'em inside this building right
| now...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > never put Lithium-ion batteries inside buildings
|
| No EVs in garages or multi-storey car parks?
| morphle wrote:
| You will have to do some research to find out what the
| new laws in the making and fire department procedures say
| about garages and multi-story car parks in 2024.
|
| A quick review by me just now suggests the government
| regulations still have not yet caught up with the new
| reality in the US and EU:
|
| EV's and large batteries inside buildings are not yet
| forbidden but probably will be soon.
|
| Fire departments choose to evacuate a building with EV
| fires (and other industrial fires) and just let it burn
| out [2].
|
| Fire departments only quench a fire by sudden rapid
| cooling if possible, for example by drowning [1] the
| entire Li-ion fire in a basin. Taking the oxygen away is
| not the goal.
|
| [1] https://www.ctif.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/Putt
| ing%20o...
|
| I design neighbourhood batteries as two shipping
| containers underground. In the bottom container the
| batteries with multiple infrared camera's looking at all
| battery sides and also with redundant temperature
| sensors. The top shipping container will deliver 60.000
| liter of water into the bottom container in seconds.
| Testing such a setup would make for a hot and cool
| spectacular Mythbusters episode.
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT1QTPEZoHY
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Testing such a setup would ...
|
| You've tested it, right?
| morphle wrote:
| I wish, it'll cost a million dollars or more to test at
| this scale.
|
| But please, come help me do this test!
| pwillia7 wrote:
| You can sell tickets to the events like it's 1930
| cesarb wrote:
| > Note that while the article says "soldering" the pictures
| show "welding",
|
| In some languages, these are the same word (this is the case at
| least for my native Portuguese), so this could just be a
| translation issue.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Wait what? Is there a distinction for Brazing? There isn't a
| distinction for the same metals vs different ones?
| duskwuff wrote:
| They're also more or less synonymous in Chinese, resulting in
| a lot of weird phrases like "infrared welding" or "SMT
| welding practice kit".
| yardie wrote:
| > Be careful if it smells like birthday cake when you're
| working with lion cells
|
| This is hilariously specific. I wasn't sure how to describe
| that sweet smell of li-ion packs immolating. Birthday cake
| seems to fit it perfectly.
| kazinator wrote:
| Ah, Mom's good old lithium birthday cakes ...
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| The birthday cake smell thing is right on, happened to me. I
| was transporting a hobby fighting robot and noticed the smell.
| When I took it out of the metal box I found a wire had broken
| and the 18650 battery was shorted.
| analog31 wrote:
| In addition to the heat issue, a lot of battery contacts don't
| form a good joint with typical electrical solder.
|
| Source: Tried to solder batteries.
| euniceee3 wrote:
| I cant wait for outfits like this to pop up in the states. I have
| a couple of battery packs that are dead and I do not have the
| time or patience to rebuild. They are gonna go to CL free, but I
| looked for local services that can rebuild them.
|
| As more battery packs begin to fail this will become the norm.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| They do exist.
|
| Off the top of my head Tenergy is one that operates in the
| states, but there's tons of them out there.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I have no idea what the fascination with this is, and what makes
| these batteries "homemade".. also, it's spotwelding and not
| soldering.
|
| Buying battery cells and spot welding them together is a thing
| that many companies do, even in the "western world", i know of at
| least three in my small eu country.
|
| Before lithium, they did the same with NiMh and NiCd batteries.
|
| You can also make them yourself at home, although it can get
| relatively dangerous if you don't know what you're doing... same
| as with replacing an outlet at home, but more of a fire damage
| instead of a shock risk, so definitely not for everyone, but with
| some basic precautions, can be done safely.
|
| The bigger problem in the current times is, that device
| manufacturers fight hard against any kind of repair or DIY stuff,
| so sometimes just disconnecting the cells from the BMS (battery
| management system) makes it "reset" and fail the "authenticatioN"
| between the device and the BMS (which exists only to prevent
| repair). Companies know how to avoid that (via using a power
| supply to keep the board powered up), but attempting to DIY fix
| it (without knowing about the issue) makes you destroy the BMS.
| callalex wrote:
| Is this really a common practice outside of
| FutureMotion/OneWheel?
| mperham wrote:
| Bosch is known to pair their hardware such that you can't
| replace a bad element, e.g. replace a bad Bosch battery with
| a 3rd party unit. The entire Bosch ebike hardware ecosystem
| is locked down and only approved dealers can repair.
| fragmede wrote:
| It's pretty common. They're far from the first ones to have
| started that practice, which began in the 2000s. The concept
| of the battery management system (BMS) killing the pack for
| safety reasons came with modern BMS chips that can do state
| of health (SoH) measuring, along with state of charge (SoC)
| measuring.
| centizen wrote:
| They are even matching the internal resistance of the cells, I
| can't think of much more a professional manufacturer would be
| doing. As long as they are getting their cells from reputable
| sources (big if) I don't see anything wrong with a boutique
| battery industry for niche applications.
| morphle wrote:
| A professional manufacturer would not put any cell in series
| but instead would have a charger/discharger with voltage per
| cell, with current and temperature sensors as feedback loops.
| The danger of cells in series differs with the cell
| chemistries.
|
| Using a BMS is another indication they are not professional
| or even had an engineer design them.
|
| Sadly I know of only a very few small professional battery
| pack manufacturers, certainly none of the EV or bike makers.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Love to see something of a standard e-bike battery. Perhaps there
| is one in Southeast Asian markets....
|
| Something roughly a liter, liter and a half in size. A standard,
| perhaps twist connector on the bottom. Various bike configs could
| incorporate a handful of these in locations that make sense for
| their bikes -- the number of packs reflecting the range or torque
| requirements.
|
| With a standard you could swap packs, get the cost benefits of
| scale...
| celestialcheese wrote:
| You see this in Taiwan a lot already -
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/11/gogoro-batteries-power-...
|
| Standardized packs for low-end ebikes would be wonderful.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Those are for scooters though, not ebikes.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| What's the difference and what is your point? They are 48v
| nominal lithium batteries.
| roughly wrote:
| The article goes to great pains to emphasize how concerning this
| is and how much of a safety risk it is seemingly without finding
| a single actual incident where the independent battery builders'
| batteries caused a problem. Frankly, given the level of quality
| control I've seen from large brands lately, I'm skeptical that
| the guy who's made it his business to build batteries for the
| last 20 years is delivering a worse product than what I'd get
| buying retail.
| markhahn wrote:
| More of this please!
|
| It's astonishing how anti-modular various industries are. Even
| batteries, which for all their "oh no gonna blow" are really
| quite simple components. But why are cars not modular? How about
| HVAC? Housing is pretty modular.
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