Our battery vacuum cleaner #Xiaomi Dreame V10 (VVN5) stopped working for more than a few seconds and shows a #battery warning.

I thought it'd be easy to get a new battery, but doesn't seem so. I opened up the battery pack to find 7 Samsung INR 18650 cells and a PCB.

The cells are electrowelded to their connectors with two little dots. Something I couldn't do to replace them to #repair the pack.

So I asked a company specialized in refurbishing batteriy packs and they told me that they wouldn't do this, because once disconnected the PCB would shut down and stop working. They wouldn't be able to bring it back to life.

They can't offer me replacing the cells mechanically, because of - liability and warranty laws.

#repairability #PlannedObsolescence

So... I ordered a new #battery pack for the #Xiaomi Dreame vacuum cleaner. It has not been an official replacement part, because I didn't find one. The battery worked for three month and then went flat.

Shortly after the vacuum cleaner stopped working and I put it on my #flohmarkt just in case someone would need replacement parts.

For all the rechargeable batteries in our household I had bought a charger that also #charges #LiIon and has options to measure the #capacity of cells.

These are the capacities of the #Samsung INR186050-25R cells I removed from the battery pack of the cleaner (mAh): 2366, 2294, 2262, 2254, 2321, 2267, 2257.

Looking at the #specs for the battery I found that the capacity should be 2500mAh. There's also a curve "20A discharge cycle life of 25R" that shows that a capacity of ~2200mAh is reached around charge cycle no. 150 of 250 cycles being tested. ~2300mAh is a value for around 100 charge cycles.

I'm wondering whether these cells can still be safely used in some other application.

@me I think you can use these without problems in everything that doesn’t need much current.
And a spot welder and Ni strips for connecting the cells are cheap. Don’t solder them…