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Lithium Ion Battery - 18650 Cell (2600mAh, Solder Tab)
This is the same 18650 Lithium Ion Cell that you know and love, but now includes pre-attached solder tabs! These round high capacity cells have been mainly used in flashlight type applications but with its capability to be used as a drop-in rechargable cell at 3.7V with a capacity of 2600mAh. This battery has been made even better with the attached solder tabs. You now have a much wider range of applications to drop this battery into while still remaining simple to install!
These 18650 Cells have a standard discharge current of 0.2C to a maximum of 1C and can handle about 300 charge cycles.
Note: This battery is not available to ship to Alaska or Hawaii, or through any express services (2-day, overnight), or internationally. This is temporary! Check out our blog post for more information. Additionally orders may take longer to process and therefore do not qualify for same-day shipping. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause!
Note: This item is non-returnable. If this item arrives damaged or is not functioning properly, please do not hesitate to contact us to see if further actions may be taken.
- 65mm x 18.2mm (2.6" x 0.7")
Lithium Ion Battery - 18650 Cell (2600mAh, Solder Tab) Product Help and Resources
Battery Technologies
February 6, 2013
The basics behind the batteries used in portable electronic devices: LiPo, NiMH, coin cells, and alkaline.
Core Skill: Soldering
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Skill Level: Rookie - The number of pins increases, and you will have to determine polarity of components and some of the components might be a bit trickier or close together. You might need solder wick or flux.
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Core Skill: Electrical Prototyping
If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Competent - You will be required to reference a datasheet or schematic to know how to use a component. Your knowledge of a datasheet will only require basic features like power requirements, pinouts, or communications type. Also, you may need a power supply that?s greater than 12V or more than 1A worth of current.
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Customer Reviews
4.5 out of 5
Based on 11 ratings:
3 of 3 found this helpful:
Excellent Quality
I had previously purchased 18650 cells from eBay- the nameplate ratings said anything from 6AH to 4.2AH. The 6AH measured to be 800mAH and the 4.2 AH cells were 1.9AH. These off brand cells are never as good as their ratings. The SparkFun cells were spot on. Don't be fooled by sellers rewrapping cells. Very satisfied.
Dale
2 of 2 found this helpful:
Good Battery/ Tabs are weak though
Quality construction and battery, good discharge curve. Tabs are weakly soldered and come off easily.
Really helpful for those of us without spot welders
So like a lot of people I needed some 18650 cells for a project but I also dont want to solder straight onto a cell. Given that I lack a spot welder that seemed the only way to go.. but then I found these!
They act as my starter pack now before I actually need to handle decent current. Which is why we have 4/5 stars.
The discharge rate on these are fairly meh.
Good for one phone charge
My wife found within her stuff a forgotten cylindrical USB power bank, featuring a dead Lithium rechargeable cell. It surprised me finding almost no such cells with solder tabs on the market. But I needed one because I can't spot-weld. Luckily there was this one. I could build it into my device, charge it from the computer's USB jack and charge an iPhone 5. The phone got full, and the power bank not empty. The left-over charge couldn't replenish the phone a 2nd time, so I have to be happy with the successful single run.
Works
I got this to replace an old one in a cordless screwdriver and so far seems to have done the trick! I installed it and it worked better than the old one immediately, recharging it for the first time now. The solder tabs were a bit flimsy to insert in the connectors, but managed to get them in and secure.
Good battery with weak and thin solder tabs
I replaced the battery in a screwdriver with this item and now the screwdriver is up and running, so overall I'm happy. The solder tabs are so weak that I was convinced I was going to break them during assembling.
Good batteries, convenient to use
I order many cheap parts from other sellers with questionable quality, but if it's about batteries I need them to be reliable and safe. I made a good decision and ordered them from here. They worth the price, convenient to use because of the attached soldering tabs. I haven't measure the actual capacity but the batteries are heavy enough and work well enough to believe.
The tabs are great to have
I like the Lithium Ion battery with the tabs because the tabs allow me to have a lot of flexibility in how I arrange my set of tabbed batteries. I can configure the cells in parallel or series or a parallel/series combination while allowing me to remove them easily for charging.
Only problem with the tabs is they are a little too flexible/malleable/bendable and so I feel like they can break off easily if I don't handle them with care. If they could be a little more stiff so I can push a female connector plug onto the tab or pull off the female connector without fear of breaking them for example that would be great.
18650 batteries for Electrolux Stick Vacuum
After 5 years, my Electrolux Stick vacuum would only run for about a minute. These batteries were the perfect replacement. Now it runs great. Please note, vacuum disassembly and soldering is required. These are high current batteries and caution is required.
Excellent quality 18650
I used this particular one to repair a little Tack-Life drill/driver. It's powered by a single 18650. Solder tabs are perfect for this purpose.
This is particularly excellent because these are no longer found on FleaBay nor crAmazon since they will not ship them.
How much do these cells weigh? Sorry if I missed it somewhere.
Please don't use these for vape mods. They are only 1.5c and it is common to use 8c to 18c for that application. Make sure you do your research and know how to do the math to be safe. This is not like consumer electronics batteries where if they are physically the right size you can use them. When these industrial batteries are misused it is very violent.
Seconded. Make sure the battery has an adequate discharge rating, and more importantly, a protection circuit. Otherwise you can cause a battery to vent, or worse -- explode. More information here.
very very simple question, will the sparkfun LiPo charger basic micro-usb thingee charge this???
Why does it say Polymer in the title? This is obviously not a LiPo, it is a cylindrical 18650 Li-ion cell.
It seems implied by the video and description that these can be set up to make large banks of parallel batteries, however the comments from the other, standard Li-Ion batteries (the JST ones) suggest that they should not be placed in parallel unless the cells are carefully balanced. What sets these tabbed batteries apart from the JST ones in this regard?
I built a 13 cell serial battery pack that required 26 of the battery clips. Solder tabs straight to a PCB would have been much easier/cheaper and probably more physically secure.
It seems that series arrays would be much more dangerous because of reverse charge issues that simply aren't possible on parallel arrays and higher currents that naturally occur as a result of higher voltage. Parallel arrays distribute the current load and as the battery resistance imbalance increases, rather than reverse charge, the pack simply won't last as long.
Not sure if anyone said this already but I believe that the Tesla's battery pack is an array of 6,800 of these cells.....so to say these guys are pretty scalable is an understatement :) Of course, you'd need to deal with cooling, charging and balancing if you wanted to power your home with these babies.
http://evauthority.com/the-tesla-battery-pack-challenge/
Is this battery protected against over-charging, under-capacity, etc.? Or is it unprotected? I have this battery unit that says for best results, use unprotected batteries (the unit has its own protection circutry and the battery's evidently interferes with this). I just tested it with two protected batteries that claim to be 4500mA each, but I was only able to draw about 680mA at 5v power (figure about 1.0A at the battery's native 3.7v).
The great majority of batteries I see on ebay are protected. I ordered one set of batteries that the seller claimed were unprotected, but they were protected when I opened the box. The seller did refund my money (and corrected the ebay listing for the batteries), but at some point I would like to try it with unprotected batteries.
Unprotected. You must add the proper battery protection circuits. These are commonly used in laptops inside the battery pack, along with the proper protection and monitoring circuits.
I don't know if they're protected or not, as the datasheet makes no mention, but the datasheet does show they handle stress tests well...
Being dropped from 1m; Being Vibrated; Being put in an oven; Shorting the terminals; Reverse charge at 1C for ten minutes; Overcharge with regular charge followed by a 10v per cell charge for 8 hours
What is required to charge two of these in series to get to 7.4V? I understand that you need to charge balance, but is all it takes one of these set to 7.4?
http://www.amazon.com/TLP-2000-Tenergy-Universal-Charger-3-7V-14-8V/dp/B001BEXDRQ/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1420831575&sr=8-18&keywords=tenergy+smart+charger
It's common practice to series connect small numbers of 18650 cells without charge balancing circuitry; just be sure to use matched cells (from the same mfr lot if possible) and start them out at exactly the same voltage.
A good match for a 7.4V 2600mAh pack of these batteries is this one, which will charge the pack in about 4 hours.
So, I came here to ask a similar question. I'm maybe a little further along in research. There are parts that can charge 2-4 LiPo cells in series, with over volt protection and correct charge regime. For instance, MCP73213, 10 pin 3x3mm package. There are probably others, I'm not too far along with Googling and quizzing friends. Then cell balancing is (I gather) typically done with a separate part, such as a BQ29200, also a no-see-um package, also the result of only a few minutes googling.
So another thing to guard against is undervoltage and excess current draw. I presume there are battery monitor/cell-balancers that have under-voltage outputs that could drive a FET switch or something to disconnect the load at low voltage.
Anyway, it sounds like we have similar needs. I'd really like to use two of these in series to get 7.4V, and have some kind of bullet-proof charge controller circuit to use with them. I'd like to know what you find.
Hopefully someone here can answer your questions, but these guys are into Lithium batteries big time. http://www.rcgroups.com/batteries-and-chargers-129/?s=48e0cb52c13ed268b71e566832801bd4&
Really awesome offering, particularly as I'm now looking for a power source for robotics platform I'm working on that uses a pair of 30v capable DC gear motors.
My question is, does anybody have a link to some resources to build an appropriate charger? First thoughts are that 20 of these arranged as two parallel banks of 10 would be ideal for my project, however I'm clueless in what the charger for such a thing might look like.
Thanks!
You might have better luck with just having a couple in series then boosting. This guy looks pretty capable http://www.amazon.com/RioRand-Adjustable-Regulated-Converter-Voltmeter/dp/B00HVCWGNE/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1420407549&sr=8-11&keywords=boost+converter
I have experience with an array of up to 10 cells in parallel in 0.01C type applications and they do not have balancing issues as far as I can tell simply because the voltage is drawn down simultaneously on all cells. They are essentially self leveling, where the stronger cells feed the weaker cells until becoming equivalent. I have never used series arrays but that seems like trying to balance a house of cards. A single cell charger is all that is needed to charge a parallel array. Depending on your application, a protection circuit on each cell would help stop the whole array from exploding if 1 battery fails short. Keep in mind that the initial current draw from a fully charged array will be sourced heavily from the strongest battery in array so high current draws on a freshly charged pack could be problematic, but the heavy load from the single cell should not last long as the cell voltages become equivalent. Maybe someone else can speak to heavy loads on parallel arrays.
Gnarly. It would look gnarly. Look up cell balancing chips that can handle 10 cells, and the circuits that go with them. And that is just the balancing side, not the charging side of the battery controller. Most battery packs like that have a microcontroller overseeing the battery pack state-of-charge, with temperature monitors and the whole works. You might look at getting a replacement cell for a Nissan Leaf (there are after-market places where you can get them) I seem to recall that the SMBus protocol to talk to the Nissan battery is documented. I think the Nissan pack is 90V or so, though, if memory serves.
OK, so my memory was off on most of the specs I stated above, but still, Leaf cells available here: http://www.hybridautocenter.com/