Repurposed vapes

[warlord0]

Guy makes “dodgy e-bike” from 130 used vapes to make point about e-waste

It’s not a project for most people, but watching someone ride up to 20 miles, and up to 30 mph, on tossed-out vape batteries is transfixing.

arstechnica.com

Interesting source of power

 

[Ghost1951]

I've got one of those old vape batteries in a tiny pocket torch I carry with me. The torch used to have a shabby type cheapo 14500 battery in it, very light weight and little capacity. It was soldered to the swicthing and re-charge board inside the torch and it stopped working the other day. The issue was the battery. It was totally dead and would not charge. I have no idea why it gave up like it did, because it was not neglected.

Anyway - while I was looking at it, and thinking about getting another 14500 battery, I remembered that I had picked up a broken up disposable vape in the street about a year ago. It looked as if someone had trodden on it and there was the perfectly sound little 500mAhr battery. I salvaged that bit and charged it at the time and put it in a plastic bag and left it for some future project.

Now it has one.

 

[portals]

1500W rear hub, nice, hope he wasn't riding it on a main road....!

 

[Az.]

That is exactly what we don't need at this moment with electrical safety bill going through parliament - dodgy batteries and dodgy e-bikes.

 

[saneagle]

That is exactly what we don't need at this moment with electrical safety bill going through parliament - dodgy batteries and dodgy e-bikes.

I watched his video. He knew what he was doing. He got hold of the data sheet for the cells. All the cells were new, as they could only have been through one charge cycle at the most. |He had what looked like professional cell testing equipment and a proper 8-cell charger/ballancer that gave the individual cell data when charging. He made his own cell holder/separators and soldered the tags to copper busbar. Overall, I'd say that his battery is probably safer than the one in your bike. It's a shame he didn't design his case for the downtube.

 

[portals]

Suppose the problem is though 99% of people who attempt this would just gaffa tape them together with no spacing and wire the S and P using unsuitable AWG wire rather than busbar etc.

I was out on ebike earlier, there was delivery dude at co-op with a heavy duty gaffa taped massive triangle battery in the frame gaffa taped on and a rear hub that was 1000/1500W. I got off bike and was about take a pic when dude arrived and got aggressive asking I think what I was doing, he got straight on his bike then sped off, he's hardcore and hadn't even bothered to lock it up!

 

[soundwave]

say cheese