Dude! In Ukraine we're using these vape batteries to make trench lights for the army, mortar scope lights and a backup power supply for routers. It's a great way to get almost free li-ion cells.
@@NouvelEmpiregive up your country so I can have cheap products? You're a sympathizer, appeaser..and all round awful human being if you think another country should submit so you can have cheap products..
And from a consumer's perspective, using a rechargeable refillable vape is, in my experience, 4-5x cheaper than going the disposable route. If you're reading this and looking to make the switch, check out pod systems like the caliburn or smok vapes (smoks tend to die after ~6mo or so, however).
I can't speak for the UK, but at least in many places in the US, they came around because states banned refillable or "cartridge" vapes such as Juuls. They also often banned the sale of flavored vape liquid. As a result, these disposable ones showed up as an all-in-one solution to get around all those legislations. So if you're worried about the ecological effects of these, you can thank your local politicians. Vapers didn't want them either. As you seem to already know, they were happy with refillable before the laws changed in 2020-2021.
@@danedi2951 Have been using a Caliburn G2 for almost 3 years now. Have been very satisfied with it, other than cleaning it quite often sometimes. You get some bad coil replacements and they might leak a little.. But is a really good performer. Coil might last 3 weeks or so about 2-3ML a day and still hold flavor very well as long as you don't use the creamy or milky or what have you. Those kill them super quick far as flavor goes, but that has always been the case.. Only thing wrong with the caliburn is sometimes the light will stay green even when it's about dead but I usually kinda know when to start charging it at this point..Plus it only cost 25-30 US...for 3 years that is pretty good..
Just gonna say I prefer the disposables. I was a hater for the longest time wanting to stick to my “bacon” cotton and rewicking RDAs with a new coil every week. But it got old. And the flavor imo just was better in some of these new disposables (geek bar for example) and I’ve tried countless smok pod systems as well, taste wasn’t there. A Valyrian pod system was close as I’ve found to a disposable and makes me question if I’m burning money. But hey no more refills, buying coils all that.
I would love to try and do this, but I have no idea about anything once he said he had a custom PCB made for it, how do I go about getting these items? Finding the vape batteries isnt hard. I have a 3D printer, he has a link for the power bank module, but im lost with the PCB
And these are just the ones that were NOT thrown into the trash... imagine how many ... wait, people who buy disposable vapes probably aren't the type to use the trash can.
The crazy part is profit wise these disposables are designed to always have battery left when thrown away. They have more battery than juice in them because they didn't want people tampering with the batterys to try and get the last puffs out. So we collectively decided that instead of little timmy burning his hands off trying to do a "hack" to get one last puff of his vape we get billions of mostly full batteries being thrown into landfill.
After 3 years collecting vapes from the floor I feel that I found my soulmate 🤣. I have added LiPo rechargable battery to every single device I have at home and now due to the abundancy of vapes I have been thinking several months about a similar project. Thanks a lot for sharing. Also a tip from vape picker to vape picker. I usually dont throw away the cases because they are handy to fit inside two batteries in series or one battery plus a charging module. Thenm I add some diodes in serie to adjust the output voltage and take a cable with a JST2 connector out from the mouth piece of the vape. Like that you will get a nicely enclosed battery that can be used to power your small devices.
Yes, I also have some good-looking and good condition cases that I plan on using as casing for projects. I found a nice orange/black 420 vape. It was looking so cool I did the appropriate modifications to hold a bluetooth receiver so I can use it with my favorite headphones. I also wanted to use the internals of an old bluetood neckband, wiring the old speaker terminals to a 3.5mm jack that utilizes the former mouthpiece as the jack for the headphones.
@@DarkChaosMC I find very cool to have a device that still looks like a vape but with a totally different function. In the past I built and gift some small rechargeable flash lights that in the outside looked identical to the vape except for the fact that they had a push button on the mouthpiece and some leds on the back. No one complained about the gift 🤣
Another advice regarding vape cases. Some of them are almost a perfect size to fit a 18650 cell in them. You can also glue them together to hold the very same cells you've taken out of them for your projects. With a bit of ingenuity and a thread cutter you can make neat compartments for swappable cells too. Very useful for projects like light sources, communication devices, sensors, etc.
You’ve inadvertently convinced a bunch of people to recycle for ‘free batteries’ I’ve been seeing this video getting shared everywhere with people saying ‘you could get free power banks by grabbing some vapes off the street’ So good on you, people are recycling because of this.
It really does spark the whole movement... they really should implement a place to put these though for the sake of recycling though if people are just going to throw them away.
@@SWUnreal Well, for PET-bottles there are pretty effective deposit-systems in place in some countries. I live in Germany and couldn't imagine ever throwing a bottle away. I cringed every single time I had to when I was on vacation in Italy earlier this year. If I'm not at home, there's a clever and pretty popular slogan printed on many trash cans here in Berlin called "Pfand gehört daneben" which means "deposit belongs on the side", so more needy people like homeless people or (unfortunately) senior citizens don't have to grab them from the trash. Deposit on bottles should be mandatory globally.
@@topkekbieri We have a (presumably) similar system in South Australia. It works brilliantly, but several other Australian states are unable to legislate for it because of pressure from the beverage industry. Coca-Cola has a big sook* about how putting a 10 cent deposit on a $3 can of their nutritious nectar would "heavily damage our sales" and thus "cost jobs - you don't want to destroy JOBS do you Mr./Ms. Politician (P.S. How was the trip to Fiji with the kids? Oh, I'm glad they had fun.)" To be clear, it's just lobbying and DEFINITELY NOT corruption. Capitalism is super good and normal. * sook, verb: whinge, whine, complain (aust, NZ, Brit English)
Btw the design was originally only going to have 4 bolts, but the PCB flexed too much, and the cells didn't make a good connection, so I went a bit overkill..... The next design will be much better
(I posted this in the main section, but wanted to bring this to your attention @1oblob. Amazing video btw, love the work.) Anyone who watches this great video and decides to take apart a vape, PLEASE do it with gloves on and do not get the vape juice/liquid everywhere! It is extremely potent and can be absorbed through the skin which can give you nicotine poisoning. I have personal experience of this from when I decided to do exactly that and, being a thin person, I absorbed a lot of the liquid through my skin, not knowing how potent it was and suffered from head, neck and back aches for weeks until I realised where it was coming from. I was already being careful not to contaminate myself which means that it could have been a lot worse. What I didn't realise to begin with is that the liquid is not only on the inside of the sponge, but also on the outside of the clear plastic around it which I held. It was also on the inside of the tube and on every surface the sponge module came into contact with. If you do use gloves, please be responsible with them and not touch everything after the sponge because that will contaminate your environment, and dispose of the sponge and gloves responsibly (idk how nicotine can be disposed but look it up). @1oblob please could you either edit and reupload this video or put it in the next one because this is very important information.
don't forget to mention it reduces e-waste imagine all the batteries that are thrown out in disposable every day. I see them all the time in the trash at my workplace.
@@crm4667 The power bank will eventually become e-waste. It's only a reduction if someone built a power bank, who was already definitely going to buy one. Constructing one when you weren't already going to buy one does exactly zero to reduce e-waste.
i worked in the vape industrie from 2018-2022... and disposables are the worst thing ever happened... its so sad to see the garbage in the nature all the time... thank you for this video.
@@marcd6897 People being upset about EV's but not the fact that we make hundreds of millions of cars every year just so the market can keep growing. Or the fact that 1 trillion smartphones are made each year, tremendous amount of resources going into these things just to make money, its ridicules and people say climate change is not real, imao.
@@marcd6897 I think the people who choose to vape are also the same people who choose to drive EVs. I think the "old-world" humans still smoke and drive gasoline cars. Just an observation here in the Midwest USA.
Its crazy how a homemade youtube video single handedly shows that even if their garbage they can be reused , im more surprised there isnt a company that collects these to repurpose considering how many get thrown away and the vast quantities they make off the initial sale. Even adding a sanitization part to the disassembly wouldnt even make it that expensive for them.
The answer: money. Recycling is very expensive and the world we live in is build on money so it will never change. Only small change to appease the masses.
These li-ion cells are really cheap to buy new for a manufacturer. There also unfortunately aren’t a lot of use cases to recycle these, the size of the cells is quite large compared to capacity - this giant power bank he made only has 15.000 mAh, while being 12x the size and weight of a commercial battery of the same capacity. I think that it is a shame that these are allowed to be sold and that people throw it in the street and regular garbage cans as if it wasn’t e-waste. But running a business on recycling these would not be profitable. I hope that people start sorting their trash and the government can do proper recycling of them.
They would prefer to get the micrograms of gold off of literal tons of circuit boards while throwing away tons of coper worth many times more lol They do not think about things like oh lets use all these millions of lithium batteries to make inexpensive power banks and battery packs that we can sell for 1/4 the cost of comparable power banks make a mint off them and save consumers 60% over mass market brands. I have made so many power banks and battery packs from "dead" old school laptop batteries from when they used bog standard 18650 cells it is not even funny. I would guess that i have made packs that are about 1 or 2 mega amp hours worth of 5 and 12 volt battery packs over the years. See with laptop batteries the battery is shot once any you loose about 25% worth of capacity on any single cell. Most laptop battery packs of the type use 2500 mah cells to 2750 mah cells so a cell that has lost 25% of its capacity is still capable of 1875 mah on the low side and 2060 on the high side for most some use 3k mah so those are 2250 mah. A laptop battery typically has 4 6 or 8 cells and only 1 of those will have been depleted to that 75% capacity in rare cases 2. So each pack will have 3 5 or 7 cells near 100% if not 100% capacity and 1 at 75% rated. The ones at less than 95 to 100% capacity i just use for rechargeable flashlight batteries the others i use for packs or power banks. I use to sell them to friends or give them away as gifts to friends and such. Others i used for various purposes for my own side projects
Great to see you raising awareness of this e-waste! I save my old vapes, then dismantle & salvage the batteries 2-3 times a year. My local big box home improvement store accepts used rechargeable batteries, so I at least can keep them out of the landfill
@@savio2043 Imagine being so pathetic you're still using the "imagine X" line online to try bully people you must be such a fulfilled and nice person /sarcasm I don't really like vapers either but I've got enough going on in my life that I don't have a schzoid tantrum about them, you should try go getting a life then you won't be so upset anymore lil bro.
Buy a large bin, print a sign, and take it to your local vape shop and ask them if you can leave it there for people to come throw away their used vapes and you'll collect more vapes than you know what to do with,without any effort involved in picking them off the ground.
The problem is that people who use disposible vapes don't go to vape shops, they just buy them from the corner shop, newsagents, or their mate at school/college. Vape shops seem to mostly cater for adult users of reusable vapes selling the juice and spare parts etc
Wet blanket is that biohazard exposure mitigation at volume becomes a huge concern. Literally to point of baseline and periodic blood monitoring for best practice.
You can get the juice from any smoke shop, and a lot of disposables have a usb-C port. You can technically reuse them a bit, but the wear item is the coil, so you're better off with a regular vape that uses swappable 18650s and replaceable coils.@@jaylopez6450
@@jaylopez6450but refillable mods have been around for years and the juice although tightly regulated you can get at most smoke shops or vape shops so it’s simply to generate more profit it the cancer debate if they can sell one treatment vs multiple treatments you make more selling more not selling one once forever
I worked in a smoke/vape store in the US as outgoing and product management during the rise of disposables. There are no recycling programs, no turn-in programs, nothing of the sort and its extremely disappointing just how many batteries get discarded in this manner. I always wanted to see someone making tech with these and its great content.
@@achannelhasnoname5182 - I guess coming back full circle with regular cigarettes which carries an over 500% tax. A pack before taxes costs a few dollars, but after taxes over 10 bucks. Honestly disposable vapes should be banned outright, when Refillable/rechargeable vapes are so much better.
I guess going full circle with regular cigarettes which carries an over 500% tax. A pack before taxes costs a few dollars, but after taxes it's over 10 bucks. Honestly disposable vapes should be banned outright, refillable/rechargeable vapes are so much better.
I wonder if you could actually make money by collecting them... if the disposable vapes used one design it would be possible to automate the battery extraction process
Yes to more content like this, I will up my game in collecting cells, the things are everywhere, I dont have a 3d printer so would be interested in purchasing a kit of you or Mark. Great to see the younger generations helping to save the planet. good luck in all your ventures.💥
After overwhelming demand, I'm now working on releasing a kit so that anyone can easily build one! So stay tuned and subscribe if you haven't already :)
Great project! I used to make battery packs from discarded laptop batteries years ago, and I wanted to share some advice in case it helps anyone. You mentioned the final capacity being around 15,000mAh, but the concern with recycled cells is the capacity and health of each one, not just voltages. Someone may have already mentioned this in comments, but in my experience, testing each cell's capacity with a simple battery tester is key. It helps you weed out weak or unhealthy cells that could bring down the performance of the whole pack. even cells that get really warm while you lightly charge them should be discarded. you want healthy cells. (you can buy cheap simple testers online or even fancy expensive ones) Then, after testing, let the good cells sit for a couple of weeks. If any lose significant voltage, they’re also likely unhealthy and should be excluded. Grouping cells with similar capacities together ensures a more reliable pack and will charge and discharge better. I know it's extra work, but it's important for anyone making larger packs, especially cases when you want to make a battery pack that will require large power draw like an E-bike battery. anyways awesome video man, really turning trash into something so useful.
@@burtburtist a good rule of thumb for maximizing the life of a lithium cell is to not continuously discharge it faster than 1 full capacity per hour, aka 1C. So e.g. for a 1200mAh cell, that's 1.2A of maximum continuous current draw. That being said, drones draw their current in big short gulps a lot of the time so spikes of 5-10 amps would be fine. I use a 10 Ah lithium cell to jump start my car and it handles 1-2 seconds of several hundred amps just fine.
This is awesome. Ive been collecting and using vape batteries for about a year now. Used them to power a small drone, in a power bank, power source for an LED light in an outside take one leave one library with a solar panel, and in a light source for my 3D printer
As these vapes develops, a lot of them are starting to come with usable screens as well. I recently picked up a Lost Mary that has a long skinny LCD display on it. Crazy what we consider disposable.
I'm a the head of our service department. We service our E-Scooters and i was able to make a 60Ah battery from all of the dead packs. You open them up, remove the damaged cells, take the ok cells and put them into a Li-Ion charger, to get the proper resistances and capacity and then use them with the ones that are similar to eachother. These are 18650 cells, so easier to work with than the ones you're using, so it makes your video even more impressive. Great job on this!
I've been running them in Lights for years now I even use the type c charge ports that come with most been ok for me & I am using the lithium polymer cells they will draw a big amount of amps for a ebike battery though. I stared Way before people started making videos on them @@lePuru
@@lePuru No, usually the cells that die are due to the way a BMS works causing the cell(s) with the highest charge to end up going bad due to constantly charging them beyond their rated capacity. Also, letting the batteries sit uncharged for too long can cause some cells to go bad, but never have I seen them all be bad in any pack. If the pack is from a name brand tool, then the quality of the cells will be top notch. So long as you add a BMS to any battery you make with the cells, and actually maintain the charges properly, they make an excellent "free" source of the most expensive part of any project. I have built several eBikes, converted most of my devices to cordless using buck/boost converters and 3d printed battery housings, and recently I built a 16s9p battery for my eBike. I have had most of these batteries for over two years, and I have not had to repair or alter any of the batteries I have built using the reclaimed cells. If you pay attention you can find a plethora of usable cells at specific "box" stores in their conveniently placed recycle bins.
That's a real eye opener for me seeing lithium batteries being used in disposable products. Guess the global Li-ion supply chain is so streamlined that this is the most cost effective way for them to push out their product. I'm grateful for folks like you trying to spread awareness about this. Figure there will some day come a point where we will all need to learn how to scavenge like this once finite resources become scarce.
lithium is also the cheapest battery tech around that can do high current and small capacity at the same time. vapes draw a lot of current. Of course, that doesn't absolve the wasteful design, rather it just goes to show that this product is a bad idea from the beginning. Better to stick to the old box mods than to use these.
@@tissuepaper9962there are a million vape alternatives that would emulate a disposable vape just minus the disposable part. We don’t have to force them to use the huge box mods few wanna use anymore
"Figure there will some day come a point where we will all need to learn how to scavenge like this once finite resources become scarce." - Here in Germany (and in most other EU countries) there are no (as in: zero!) active landfills for household waste. Everything is either recycled, composted or incinerated (thermal recycling). In this way, most raw materials such as lithium or rare earths are already in the country and we will be more or less independent of imports in the long term.
Here in Ireland, they've, very successfully introduced a 'deposit and return' scheme for plastic bottles and aluminium cans. Disposable vapes, if you stuck a quid on each one, that you can get back upon return, 90% of the vapes on the streets and rubbish bins, would be recycled- overnight.
Would probably work but just banning disposable vapes would be way better. Reusable vapes exist and work perfectly fine. So no reason to not ban the disposable ones
The issue with reusable vapes is that they use coils to vaporise the “vape juice” which tastes bad by comparison to these disposable ones that use sponge to secrete the liquid. They need to make reusable ones that copy the disposable ones designs as people won’t switch for an inferior experience. Also, phenomenal video. A blend of passion for electronics, and also great editorial piece of e-waste. Keep doing what you’re doing, it’s inspiring
the reusable ones can taste just as good, they are essentially the same 'sponge design' you refer to. Reusable vapes have a coil that is wrapped in a cloth like material which holds the liquid you fill the tank with. If you're in the UK alot of the reuseable vapes you come across are unregulated so the manufacturers can put anything they want in the juice. They stuff the juice in them with more untested/banned chemicals to achieve the strong sugary test. i'm talking about the brands that seem to come and go very fast
I just use longfills for the aroma and nicotine salt. This mix taste exactly the same as the disposables, no matter the device. I don't know the reason but longfill aroma almost always tastes better than the normal one and the more expensive nicotine salt shots keep you from coughing unlike the normal nicotine shots.
you cant reuse a sponge setup more then twice well you can but it to a point that the sponge has absorbed so much dirt and crap from the air that its grey in color n cannot do its job anymore its also just false that wick style anything is gonna taste as good as a ceramic coil i hate those things but they last longer and you can hit them for longer then three seconds and not get a burnt tatse unlike wick coils or sponge coils whatever you folk wanna call em 😂
@@minekush1138 youre right, theyre "wick" coils. They defiently taste better. I've tried the same nic salts with a coil and it tastes nowhere near as good
@@petercruz1993 they've been around for a long time! RDA's and RTA's, both use coils or mesh ( just like disposable vapes) and tissue wadding in disposables is replaced with organic cotton in rebuildables (far superior at wicking compared to the foam reservoirs in disposables). I am still using my trusty KangerTech pro plus and my Vandy Vape mesh RTA, brilliant bits of kit and give consistent vaping.
I have always found the whole idea of a disposable vape pretty insane, and wondered if there's a better way to reuse the internal components. This video not only answers that question, but also brings awareness to the massive issue at hand!
It's legislation and corporate takeover, nothing to do with economic recorse. I've watched thousands of US juice makers go out of business over the past 10 years. It's sad. I still have old mods that's used 18650s . 😅
This is what I’ve been saying! These vapes have alot of good electronics in them, especially the batteries. Some of them even have reprogrammable microcontrollers and small spi LCD screens. Just gone to absolute waste! I’ve actually started to collect these to disinfect and use to make VR body trackers. They work amazing for this since they’re so small and sometimes pretty high capacity.
@@garyhost354You're saying that they probably make VR trackers out of a vape that use inside-out tracking using a camera? Anyone who wants accurate tracking, especially for what (I assume is) tracking arms and legs, is using lighthouses. Inside-out tracking is cool, but has inherent limitations...
Finally someone made this! Banger of a first video, keep it up. A series about reusing trivially disposed things like that would be welcome. If anyone is interested, the channel DIY perks made a great video about this called "Things you can make from old, dead laptops".
Just for anyone who might want to do this, your "cell balancing" board will prevent the cells from exploding but that is not a healthy way to balance lithium batteries and they could still potentially be damaged by doing it that way. The proper way is to charge or discharge them individually to either full or empty and then wire them to a proper balancing circuit
@@timothybradford6652 You get a TP4056 module for each battery, wire all the 5v inputs in parallel, and wire all the 3.7v outputs in parallel with a Schottky diode on each positive BATTERYOUT+ terminal to prevent voltage backflow. Pair this with a switch between all the 3.7v outs and the boost module that converts that 3.7v to whatever 5v,9v,12v, etc., and that's it. How do I know? Cause this is what im planning to do. Got over 80 vape batteries and counting ready to go.
@@Tomas970506 No it doesn't, TP4056 in incredibly cheap and affordable. How is wiring each cell to a charge module stupid? It's individual charging and protection for each cell. What's stupid is using one module for 2+ cells.
one of my favorite youtubers (chilli) is constantly finding vapes while litterpicking outside london and properly recycles them, but it's really cool to see them get reused in this way
I could see these being really useful in classrooms because there are limited outlets in many of them. Just use this baby and you’ve saved some students a lot of trouble!
😂😂 brings me back😂 i got screamed at over mt phone being plugged in she said i couldnt do that cuz someone could trip 😂 i then showed up the nect day with a heavy duty outdoor power cable like 25 feet long 😂 i wrapped it around my desk like three times around some elses desk then plugged my.phone into it 😂 i was menace back then i would.brimg three phones so even if one got taken away id still have one
This video was really inspiring! I don't vape, but I am an electrical engineer. I now want to visit parks after festivals and help with "trash" cleanup
Bro what a great project. I don't understand this issue UK government has so many laws on everything yet nothing on selling, distribution and cleaning up of disposable vape. You are actually making something useful out of which everyone thinks it's disposable.
They will make a law as soon as they figure out a way to make money off of it. Probably something like a 1$ flat tax per vape sold to "clean stuff up", instead of just making it easier and profitable to recycle e-waste.
Some weirdos complain about Lithium being used for EV batteries (which can do hundreds of thousands of miles before being moved to second life or recycled) but say nothing about the tonnes of batteries dumped on the street after one use. Great that you are doing something useful and also inspiring others!
So glad youtube recommended this to me. I have some CAD experience, but once you get to the point that you are happy with the finished product, you should upload the CAD files if you arent planning on making money off of it. I know that is probably what you meant by open source, but having the assembly files makes it way easier to tinker with and edit to make improvements. And i do believe that uploading a full tutorial, or even just a longer slower edit on how you made it would be great! I love having this kind of thing on in the background. You are doing the lords work saving the earth, in a way that is not only fun, but practical, and i wish more people had your philosophy on this sort of thing. Keep up the great work, and cant wait for any follow up videos you do!
I love this project. I have collected around 500 vapes from festivals. I select the cells based on voltage, then join them with uncoated copper wire to make the process fast. I only really make 3.7V power banks in a custom printed case, which I use to power strings of fairy lights.
Its mind boggling that these things arent illegal. And I am surprised just how friggin popular they are. You would think someone wanting to vape, to actually buy a real vape and not these things.
Well, if vapes are illegal, they’ll still find a way through the black market. They need to be legalised and then regulated to hell and back if we are to go anywhere with vapes.
It's because of the flavors. Disposable have all sorts of flavors while normal vapes are just menthol and tobacco. Imo it was a dumb play to ban juul, vuse, ect. From selling other flavors since it gave rise to this.
@@alexmcaniff6446What the fuck are you talking about??? Go to any vape shop and there's all kinds of flavors for regular vapes, both with and without nicotine. It's just a convenience thing because maintaining a vape mod takes some work. It doesn't excuse the waste of such a precious material, but I've seen vending machines with these vapes in them. It's wild.
@@terrestrialTerror you in the UK? i think in america they had a lot of states ban flavoured vape liquids, but here we still get all the options not to say it's not a problem here, you'd really think everyone would buy proper vapers by now
@@alexmcaniff6446There are 100000s of juices for standard vapes of all varieties, this is an incorrect statement. The reason that disposable vapes are popular is that they are easy and convenient.
People are surprised when I point out the little symbol on the bottom of their vapes, the "X" over the trashcan. I'm surprised there hasnt been some sort of lawsuit
@@DaftKermitThePunkI don’t really see how. Regardless of if they’re sold for human consumption or not, manufactures still do nothing to stop their customers from throwing them in the trash. They straight up call them “disposable”.
Very good video, its important to have people like you that clean our environment and even use it in the best was possible. I think if you do the marketing right and sell those powerbanks that would make a lot of profit. Huge compliment 👏
I don't know about the UK but in the US, the price per volume with the disposables is always better or the same as just a cart and your own battery. SO you typically get more puffs per dollar for a complete disposable vs, refilling or replacing carts. Which is why you see so many discarded disposables.
Not in Poland, for the price of 3 disposables you get an Ursa Nano and for the price of 3 more you can mix 60ml of max strength e liquid. 60ml is like 30 disposables.
i absolutely love stuff like this. When your open source kit is available, I will likely build my own. I just need to start picking up all the disposable vapes I find in the street.
Thank you for this video! I have been despairing about the existence of single use vapes, you give me hope at least some people out there are making something of them
I honestly thought you were a big brand youtube until I saw your profile! Great editing, humour and project. Found this on reddit, subscribed and looking forward to your future projects.
It looks like we started same year~ I screamed when these elfbars appeared... as disposable vape with Li-Ion batteries. So I am doing same projects and to be honest, all the smart home gadgets are running on them happily~
Thank you for doing this, nothing makes me angrier than seeing disposable vapes with a li-ion battery in it. Such a complete and utter waste of resources. They should slap a 10$ deposit on these things.
People don't realize how innovative this is. We are at the start of a lithium and cobalt crises. The demand rises so fast there might even be wars fought over this. Than this English bloke comes along and just starts to make unlimited amount of powerbanks.
One thing to improve the battery pack's reliable power output, would be to 1. Use a spot welder and nickel strips (I know, it's tedious, but what can you do?) 2. Measure each cell's internal resistance and actual capacity (it takes time, but in the end you have a better balanced battery, so you get to use more of the capacity available)
The internal resistance and capacity are my main concerns why i didn`t try it myself. They differ way to much and because the tabs are so shitty to connect, there is no solid way to measure the internal resistance because the measurement can`t be accurate enough. Once i measured like 5 of these 500 mAh Cells and the capacity was like more between 480-400 mAh, i measured the capacity with a discharging rate of 1C . (Thats way to much diffrence to get them properly balanced, since the cells on the lower capacity end are basically EOL with only 75% left capacity.).
@@aivazijust replace the dying cells as you go. there's no need to get to a high level of optimization when you're literally reclaiming trash. If you have cell balancing and testing equipment then go for it, but otherwise it just doesn't matter in this case. Using the cells at all is better than allowing them to go in the trash or get run over by a car.
I haven't even watched a quarter of the video, but I'm already subscribing for the amount of recycling you're doing. My guy, you're doing wonders for RUclips entertainment, DIY enthusiasts, AND pollution.
I've made thosands of these. The best thing about them is that they are safe. If they develop an internal short they tend to leak or get hot, but they never explode. Best of all,.you are saving precious lithium from landfill! Nice job!
Vape shops have little recycling bins. If you ask them they are happy to let you take them. But be careful, the quality of the cells is questionable! I always check the internal resistance and capacity of each cell, as well as other precautions (cell matching in packs etc)
I’ve worked in I.T and telecommunications, with that knowledge I can’t stand throwing these things away….I recognize that using them is already part of the problem personally and environmentally, but I appreciate this idea to use the box of deads I have. THANK YOU! I now have a project for our camping truck.
"Nobody seems to know" apart from all of big Clive's subscribers who have now been doing this for years. Made my 3rd power bank this week and have made about 6 rechargable torches also using the case of the bigger vapes.
Honestly, I've been looking out for them but I haven't been able to find any that haven't been smushed flat by cars I'm assuming everyone just puts things in the bin where I live which, I suppose that's good but nobody should be throwing these away
This is the first one I have seen using PCB for the interconnects between cells. I've avoided because I didn't want to solder them or deal with those spot welders. This is a great idea!
Amazing. Quick safety note for others; Chris is a pro [my gosh the PCB is genius] - as for if you're wrapping sides of batteries, with copper (like in video). make sure the sides are at least like seen in this vid - coated... though not entirely recommended - under any coating is pure way for short circuit - even with time, best to be careful!
People like yourself make me so hopeful for the future. One comment is that "enjoy it while it lasts", because when the intrinsic value of e-vape batteries increases there will be incentive to collect them, the fact that We're strip mining the planet for lithium when it's being tossed away by the ton is already insanity.
Finally, someone who understands! As a vape collector (and chronic nicotine addict myself) these vapes make me feel like garbage to see them tossed away. I've been asking around and looking for dead vapes that I get to salvage the battery out of, and now even my Oculus controllers are rechargable! Another good tip for anyone passing through: if you either can't get a bms or are just impatient, the rechargable disposables such as the Mr. Fog and Norths come with a "free" protection circuit and charging port for single cells. All you need to do is use the output that used to go to the pressure sensor most of the time, though every vape is different so make sure to examine the pcb.
The problem i have seen with trying to repurpose the electronics as they are from the factory is most don't output the right power or safely control the battery without pulling from the coil supply. And they are generally designed to only activate for at most 10 seconds to prevent damage. I'm really asking around to see what can be done! END OF LINE
@@jerrt I'm a little confused by what you mean, but I think I understand lol. For the wrong power output, I've personally never seen this. What you may be mixed up with is the mislabeled capacity of these cells. Typically they tend to over advertise the specification, for example the "800mah" capacity cells I measure tend to be around 600mah actual. The voltage, however, I've always seen be consistent as the battery chemistry should dictate a max deviation of ~2.8-4.2 volts depending on charge level. Most vape companies foresee this and add voltage regulators to output a stable ~3 or ~3.3 volts. If you've got a really fancy one, maybe there's even boost converter for pushing 5 volts. As for the 10-second issue it appears to be a built in functionality for the majority of 3-pin pressure sensors, and the board itself only handles power delivery and the vape specialties such as a screen and whatever else. This means you should be able to salvage power from the input pin as it always flows into the sensor, where pulling from the vape is what lets that input power through to the coil for a maximum of 10 seconds. From testing with the new Fog switch and North bar, I'm able to reliably use their boards for some simple projects with constant power flow. However, I do think it's worth noting that these shouldn't be your end all be all bms, other features on the board are just going to slowly eat your battery charge. EDIT: The input pin in this case is the input pin for the pressure sensor. The output pin I'm referencing in my original comment is the same, I just meant output from the board 😅
@@TrashStash I did miss type a bit. Usually voltages levels aren't the issue. just reliably getting constant supply. I have not tinkered with the newer units as much so I will definitely look into tapping into supply right before the sensor. Thank you for that Thought! I do want to get access to the controller chips more directly. To either extract for other projects or to disable lights and things that I wouldn't want draining voltage. END OF LINE
I love that not only are you able to make something valuable out of free trash, you're also keeping these out of a landfill *and* lowering the demand for new lithium just a lil
I couldn't believe the views and your subscriber count after I watched this video! This is down right professional, on the levels of other DIY youtubers or even better! I subscribed immediately! The only other thing I could wish for would be for you to provide links to the schematics and components for the project, like the board and 3D prints (although I can understand you not wanting to share them because they're perhaps not really ideal by your standards and could be developer further, but it would still be great if we could get the schematics for reference). Thank youb for this video!
Nice to know I'm not the only one out there. I'm doing the exact same thing. The vape industry is slowly switching to super-capacitors, which is a good thing. Well done!
@@CAMSLAYER13 people don't like changing coils or replacing cotton and they don't like getting vape juice on their fingers every time they refill the tank. comfort and convenience always win against environmental concerns.
Super cool. Love the ingenuity and craftsmanship. I would absolutely buy something like this as a kit - I don’t have a 3D printer or any soldering experience, but being able to crack open some litter off the street and slide the cells into a sleeve and screw it together would be amazing.
The balancing connector on the power bank module is also used for charging, since Li-Ion cells can have wildly varying internal resistance and capacity, thus, some charge faster, some slower. If you just slapped the full pack voltage across it, some cells might not be charged fully, while some could get overcharged, without exceeding the maximum pack voltage - thus, the balancing leads - every cell (or parallel pack) is charged separately up to its voltage, without risking overcharging
I think "balance leads" are actually discharge leads historically. You can connect them at any point and they will discharge higher voltage cells to the same level as the low voltage cells. A charger capable of "balancing" using these leads probably will have a heatsink or an aluminum body to release the waste heat. Kind of weird that it doesn't just charge some cells faster.
@@compjellythe BMS doesn't "just charge some cells faster" for the same reason that you don't put a 12-tap, 12-knob spigot in your sink to optimize the filling of the ice tray. You just fill it up until every cell is overflowing and then bam, they're all even. The extra components and complexity are not justified by the small amount of water that would be saved. The point of my analogy is that a BMS that charged e.g. 5 different banks of cells individually, that's really just 5 BMSs and would cost an appropriate amount more.
@@compjelly Correct, these are called passive balancers and are most popular. It needs only one load resistor and transistor per cell. The max. balancing current is quite low (
Excellent work, just two things you could easily improve: size and weight, you don't need so much plastic around the cells plus the bolts, a lots of unnecessary metal.
Chris said somewhere that the PCBs were too thin/flimsy and wouldn’t be able to make contact with the terminals constantly, so he just put in a bunch of bolts to increase the sturdiness and make sure all the terminals made contact all the time.
The only reason I can think of is to take advantage li-ions high discharge current for the heating element and the well established supply chain. Its terrible that we are already running low on rare earth materials and they are being used in disposable products
@@brine80charged it's about 4.2, discharges to 3.2 usually. They are the most energy dense out of tech we have right now and have a high discharge rating 10-25 amps on disposables usually.
France and Belgium have already banned & outlawed these disposable vapes (Starting Jan 12025), and knowing the EU, more countries will follow suit shortly. But still, it's great to see someone raisin awareness about the ecological impact and reusability as well. Great video!
10:01 I prefer the original case with the extra space. The more space between the cells, the better thermal wise. There should be room left for extra heat to dissipate and escape into the environment. The bolts, I should think, help greatly towards that end. If the bolts were made of aluminium and tied to a plate on each side, that would help even more. The downside would be that the construction should be inspected carefully for the possibility of creating shorts. Another idea would be to create vent holes on the two boards and have these holes go all the way through the cells' holder in order to increase the amount fo heat escaping through ventilation.
Anyone who watches this great video and decides to take apart a vape, PLEASE do it with gloves on and do not get the vape juice/liquid everywhere! It is extremely potent and can be absorbed through the skin which can give you nicotine poisoning. I have personal experience of this from when I decided to do exactly that and, being a thin person, I absorbed a lot of the liquid through my skin, not knowing how potent it was and suffered from head, neck and back aches for weeks until I realised where it was coming from. I was already being careful not to contaminate myself which means that it could have been a lot worse. What I didn't realise to begin with is that the liquid is not only on the inside of the sponge, but also on the outside of the clear plastic around it which I held. It was also on the inside of the tube and on every surface the sponge module came into contact with. If you do use gloves, please be responsible with them and not touch everything after the sponge because that will contaminate your environment, and dispose of the sponge and gloves responsibly (idk how nicotine can be disposed but look it up). @1oblob please could you either edit and reupload this video or put it in the next one because this is very important information.
@@humble2246 yeah but I still wouldn't take a bath in the 5-7% nicotine vape juice that they put in these things. There's no way that wouldn't have an effect on your nervous system.
as someone who regularly dumpster dives at a smoke shop and gets hundreds of vapes per month, i may do the same after doing some safety research, so thanks for sharing as i wasnt sure what else to do with them
@@_EyeOfTheTigerhaving done this myself, fucking don't. Wish I'd thought of the PCB idea years ago. I can afford $15 worth of PCBs to save myself hours of hassle, flux fumes, and burns.
I was in russia a few months ago and my friend found out about how easy it is to repurpose these, and he has collected over a thousand in a huge array, and he said he’s going to sell smaller ones on an unofficial basis to fund proper disposal in his area; pretty cool!
Not a bad idea, definitely worth soldering the nickel tabs instead of the copper tape though. A good soldering iron can solder 16awg wire to them pretty easy given you use good solder & flux. Ive been doing this for about 3 and a half years now. Made usb power banks, 12v packs, small 36v packs, replaced 2xAA batteries with a single 13400... Theyre awesome lil cells, but damn do they get spicy if you damage them 😂🔥🎇
Soldering anything to Lithum batteries is a terrible idea. Just don't do it. You will damage the batteries, even though you might not notice it at first. Just use spot welding to minimize the heat contamination and have a solid connection.
Your video helped me understand just how ridiculous the disposable vape industry is. With the added bonus of learning how to make my own charging bank. *subscribed
I wish you had mentioned that battery banks are only as capable as their weakest cell. If anyone is gathering batteries while waiting for a tutorial, make sure to fully charge all of your cells and keep only the highest capacity cells. If any of them are 0.5V lower than your best cell, save it for a stand-alone project or send it to the recycling center. If there are any markings on the batteries, you should also try to find ones with similar amp/hour ratings. Just because two batteries are the same physical size does not mean they have the same internal design. Voltage comes from the chemistry, but capacity comes from the thinness of the materials and condition of the electrolyte.
since most of the ones he collected seem to be of the same brand, it's safe to assume they come from the same factory & would have nearly identical batteries...
@@MG-kw1kb Not necessarily. You can get two identical laptops or power tools from the same manufacture year and they often have two different brands of battery in their packs. Since these use individual batteries, are intended to be one-time-use and have little to no regulation, these factories can maximize profits by utilizing whatever crappy, possibly used batteries they can get their hands on.
@@dhawthorne1634 I dont think your theory adapts to this batterys ... your point isnt wrong but to me this shouldnt be a problem if he uses same product with same battery (by looking) sure there is a possibility that manufactorys change something overtime... but i wouldn't assume thats the case for these batterys... but overall your pont isnt wrong and should be mentioned... in a way he did mention it by comparing the small and the bigger vape to each other
TBH, I think keeping the cells spaced out is a better idea. In the event of a single cell's violent failure, that at least MAY help avoid a chain reaction.
This is amazing, from idea to execution, not forgetting about the noble motivation to raise awareness about the disposable vape recycling problem! You just earned a subscriber eagerly awaiting for more updates on this topic, keep up the good work!
Dude! In Ukraine we're using these vape batteries to make trench lights for the army, mortar scope lights and a backup power supply for routers. It's a great way to get almost free li-ion cells.
Wow thats incredible! Keep up the good work!
🇷🇺❤️🇷🇺
@@NouvelEmpiregive up your country so I can have cheap products?
You're a sympathizer, appeaser..and all round awful human being if you think another country should submit so you can have cheap products..
@@timfagan816vatnik bot
@@timfagan816💩
Funniest part is that rechargeable vapes existed way before these disposables ever came to fruition. These don’t need to exist, yet they do.
And from a consumer's perspective, using a rechargeable refillable vape is, in my experience, 4-5x cheaper than going the disposable route.
If you're reading this and looking to make the switch, check out pod systems like the caliburn or smok vapes (smoks tend to die after ~6mo or so, however).
I can't speak for the UK, but at least in many places in the US, they came around because states banned refillable or "cartridge" vapes such as Juuls. They also often banned the sale of flavored vape liquid. As a result, these disposable ones showed up as an all-in-one solution to get around all those legislations. So if you're worried about the ecological effects of these, you can thank your local politicians. Vapers didn't want them either. As you seem to already know, they were happy with refillable before the laws changed in 2020-2021.
Thank Big Brother government for regulating what consumers actually wanted out of existence and creating a market niche for this wasteful crap.
@@danedi2951 Have been using a Caliburn G2 for almost 3 years now. Have been very satisfied with it, other than cleaning it quite often sometimes. You get some bad coil replacements and they might leak a little.. But is a really good performer. Coil might last 3 weeks or so about 2-3ML a day and still hold flavor very well as long as you don't use the creamy or milky or what have you. Those kill them super quick far as flavor goes, but that has always been the case.. Only thing wrong with the caliburn is sometimes the light will stay green even when it's about dead but I usually kinda know when to start charging it at this point..Plus it only cost 25-30 US...for 3 years that is pretty good..
Just gonna say I prefer the disposables. I was a hater for the longest time wanting to stick to my “bacon” cotton and rewicking RDAs with a new coil every week. But it got old. And the flavor imo just was better in some of these new disposables (geek bar for example) and I’ve tried countless smok pod systems as well, taste wasn’t there. A Valyrian pod system was close as I’ve found to a disposable and makes me question if I’m burning money. But hey no more refills, buying coils all that.
The PCB design really doesn't get enough credit in this. Beautiful.
Yeah that load balancer tray is making me kind of excited
I would love to try and do this, but I have no idea about anything once he said he had a custom PCB made for it, how do I go about getting these items? Finding the vape batteries isnt hard. I have a 3D printer, he has a link for the power bank module, but im lost with the PCB
It really is. Nice and orderly, neat, understated. Very sharp.
@@MrMisturr PCBway does custom PCB in small quantities.
+1 would love to buy this as a kit
It's absolutely mental these things are being chucked after they run out. Glad to see initiative still exists. Good work, Chris
And these are just the ones that were NOT thrown into the trash... imagine how many ... wait, people who buy disposable vapes probably aren't the type to use the trash can.
@@insertphrasehere15 already found two on the street without even looking. Will be checking in for the parts very soon I suspect
The crazy part is profit wise these disposables are designed to always have battery left when thrown away.
They have more battery than juice in them because they didn't want people tampering with the batterys to try and get the last puffs out.
So we collectively decided that instead of little timmy burning his hands off trying to do a "hack" to get one last puff of his vape we get billions of mostly full batteries being thrown into landfill.
@@RadarFinsR these disposable vapes are banned in my country.
@@insertphrasehere15 good job. I wish they were in mine too
After 3 years collecting vapes from the floor I feel that I found my soulmate 🤣. I have added LiPo rechargable battery to every single device I have at home and now due to the abundancy of vapes I have been thinking several months about a similar project. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Also a tip from vape picker to vape picker. I usually dont throw away the cases because they are handy to fit inside two batteries in series or one battery plus a charging module. Thenm I add some diodes in serie to adjust the output voltage and take a cable with a JST2 connector out from the mouth piece of the vape. Like that you will get a nicely enclosed battery that can be used to power your small devices.
Yes, I also have some good-looking and good condition cases that I plan on using as casing for projects. I found a nice orange/black 420 vape. It was looking so cool I did the appropriate modifications to hold a bluetooth receiver so I can use it with my favorite headphones. I also wanted to use the internals of an old bluetood neckband, wiring the old speaker terminals to a 3.5mm jack that utilizes the former mouthpiece as the jack for the headphones.
wddadadddddddddffffffffffff_fds-@@jaideesasaki
I'd use the cases as cases but I think it'd be odd having to explain to everyone "oh its just a charger, see?"
@@DarkChaosMC I find very cool to have a device that still looks like a vape but with a totally different function. In the past I built and gift some small rechargeable flash lights that in the outside looked identical to the vape except for the fact that they had a push button on the mouthpiece and some leds on the back. No one complained about the gift 🤣
Another advice regarding vape cases. Some of them are almost a perfect size to fit a 18650 cell in them. You can also glue them together to hold the very same cells you've taken out of them for your projects. With a bit of ingenuity and a thread cutter you can make neat compartments for swappable cells too. Very useful for projects like light sources, communication devices, sensors, etc.
You’ve inadvertently convinced a bunch of people to recycle for ‘free batteries’
I’ve been seeing this video getting shared everywhere with people saying ‘you could get free power banks by grabbing some vapes off the street’
So good on you, people are recycling because of this.
It really does spark the whole movement... they really should implement a place to put these though for the sake of recycling though if people are just going to throw them away.
they shouldn't have to though. The producer should be held liable. same with pet bottles.
@@SWUnreal Well, for PET-bottles there are pretty effective deposit-systems in place in some countries. I live in Germany and couldn't imagine ever throwing a bottle away. I cringed every single time I had to when I was on vacation in Italy earlier this year.
If I'm not at home, there's a clever and pretty popular slogan printed on many trash cans here in Berlin called "Pfand gehört daneben" which means "deposit belongs on the side", so more needy people like homeless people or (unfortunately) senior citizens don't have to grab them from the trash.
Deposit on bottles should be mandatory globally.
@@SWUnreal There's a really good system over here in Germany for PET bottles. Has been for years.
@@topkekbieri We have a (presumably) similar system in South Australia. It works brilliantly, but several other Australian states are unable to legislate for it because of pressure from the beverage industry. Coca-Cola has a big sook* about how putting a 10 cent deposit on a $3 can of their nutritious nectar would "heavily damage our sales" and thus "cost jobs - you don't want to destroy JOBS do you Mr./Ms. Politician (P.S. How was the trip to Fiji with the kids? Oh, I'm glad they had fun.)"
To be clear, it's just lobbying and DEFINITELY NOT corruption.
Capitalism is super good and normal.
* sook, verb: whinge, whine, complain (aust, NZ, Brit English)
Btw the design was originally only going to have 4 bolts, but the PCB flexed too much, and the cells didn't make a good connection, so I went a bit overkill.....
The next design will be much better
Thank you for making it clear, I was puzzled by the amount of bolts! Great video :D
For a prototype it shows the concept works!
Lets call it, "adding character to the design", and everything is as it should be :P
(I posted this in the main section, but wanted to bring this to your attention @1oblob. Amazing video btw, love the work.)
Anyone who watches this great video and decides to take apart a vape, PLEASE do it with gloves on and do not get the vape juice/liquid everywhere!
It is extremely potent and can be absorbed through the skin which can give you nicotine poisoning. I have personal experience of this from when I decided to do exactly that and, being a thin person, I absorbed a lot of the liquid through my skin, not knowing how potent it was and suffered from head, neck and back aches for weeks until I realised where it was coming from.
I was already being careful not to contaminate myself which means that it could have been a lot worse. What I didn't realise to begin with is that the liquid is not only on the inside of the sponge, but also on the outside of the clear plastic around it which I held. It was also on the inside of the tube and on every surface the sponge module came into contact with.
If you do use gloves, please be responsible with them and not touch everything after the sponge because that will contaminate your environment, and dispose of the sponge and gloves responsibly (idk how nicotine can be disposed but look it up).
@1oblob please could you either edit and reupload this video or put it in the next one because this is very important information.
You could screw it to the 3D print with a few regular woodscrews if you model in the corresponding holes, would be faster and lighter 👍
I love everything about this project:
- noble motivation
- genius idea
- great simplicity
- secure and responsible
Thank you so much!
don't forget to mention it reduces e-waste imagine all the batteries that are thrown out in disposable every day. I see them all the time in the trash at my workplace.
@@crm4667 The power bank will eventually become e-waste. It's only a reduction if someone built a power bank, who was already definitely going to buy one. Constructing one when you weren't already going to buy one does exactly zero to reduce e-waste.
You forgot Waste of time...
i worked in the vape industrie from 2018-2022... and disposables are the worst thing ever happened... its so sad to see the garbage in the nature all the time... thank you for this video.
Yep, and then people are upset about EVs while at the same time they dispose millions of these batteries. Truly mind boggling.
@@marcd6897
People being upset about EV's but not the fact that we make hundreds of millions of cars every year just so the market can keep growing.
Or the fact that 1 trillion smartphones are made each year, tremendous amount of resources going into these things just to make money, its ridicules and people say climate change is not real, imao.
I am glad to drink my soda from a soggy paper straw tho.
@@marcd6897 when they start to slowly die dut to high toxicity - they will start to think, someday, someday
@@marcd6897 I think the people who choose to vape are also the same people who choose to drive EVs.
I think the "old-world" humans still smoke and drive gasoline cars. Just an observation here in the Midwest USA.
Its crazy how a homemade youtube video single handedly shows that even if their garbage they can be reused , im more surprised there isnt a company that collects these to repurpose considering how many get thrown away and the vast quantities they make off the initial sale. Even adding a sanitization part to the disassembly wouldnt even make it that expensive for them.
The answer: money. Recycling is very expensive and the world we live in is build on money so it will never change. Only small change to appease the masses.
These li-ion cells are really cheap to buy new for a manufacturer. There also unfortunately aren’t a lot of use cases to recycle these, the size of the cells is quite large compared to capacity - this giant power bank he made only has 15.000 mAh, while being 12x the size and weight of a commercial battery of the same capacity.
I think that it is a shame that these are allowed to be sold and that people throw it in the street and regular garbage cans as if it wasn’t e-waste. But running a business on recycling these would not be profitable. I hope that people start sorting their trash and the government can do proper recycling of them.
They would prefer to get the micrograms of gold off of literal tons of circuit boards while throwing away tons of coper worth many times more lol
They do not think about things like oh lets use all these millions of lithium batteries to make inexpensive power banks and battery packs that we can sell for 1/4 the cost of comparable power banks make a mint off them and save consumers 60% over mass market brands.
I have made so many power banks and battery packs from "dead" old school laptop batteries from when they used bog standard 18650 cells it is not even funny. I would guess that i have made packs that are about 1 or 2 mega amp hours worth of 5 and 12 volt battery packs over the years. See with laptop batteries the battery is shot once any you loose about 25% worth of capacity on any single cell. Most laptop battery packs of the type use 2500 mah cells to 2750 mah cells so a cell that has lost 25% of its capacity is still capable of 1875 mah on the low side and 2060 on the high side for most some use 3k mah so those are 2250 mah. A laptop battery typically has 4 6 or 8 cells and only 1 of those will have been depleted to that 75% capacity in rare cases 2. So each pack will have 3 5 or 7 cells near 100% if not 100% capacity and 1 at 75% rated. The ones at less than 95 to 100% capacity i just use for rechargeable flashlight batteries the others i use for packs or power banks. I use to sell them to friends or give them away as gifts to friends and such. Others i used for various purposes for my own side projects
Capitalism makes it cheaper to just make and buy new batteries than to collect these, process them, and re-use them
I have a friend that actually does this at festivals in the UK.
This whole project was pretty bolts, I mean nuts.
shutup
@@grey0nine 😭😭😭
Deeeze nutz!! :D :D
Lmao nice pun😂
It was pretty balls, nutsack even
Great to see you raising awareness of this e-waste! I save my old vapes, then dismantle & salvage the batteries 2-3 times a year. My local big box home improvement store accepts used rechargeable batteries, so I at least can keep them out of the landfill
imagine vaping
Imagine hating on a random person@@savio2043
@@savio2043alright John Lennon
@@savio2043cmon let the dude vape
@@savio2043 Imagine being so pathetic you're still using the "imagine X" line online to try bully people you must be such a fulfilled and nice person /sarcasm
I don't really like vapers either but I've got enough going on in my life that I don't have a schzoid tantrum about them, you should try go getting a life then you won't be so upset anymore lil bro.
Buy a large bin, print a sign, and take it to your local vape shop and ask them if you can leave it there for people to come throw away their used vapes and you'll collect more vapes than you know what to do with,without any effort involved in picking them off the ground.
That's a genius idea
The problem is that people who use disposible vapes don't go to vape shops, they just buy them from the corner shop, newsagents, or their mate at school/college. Vape shops seem to mostly cater for adult users of reusable vapes selling the juice and spare parts etc
Thats what I'm saying, as long as the shops don't care you are doing literally everyone a favor and you get the reward...
@@markxr1in the words of a patrick star, we should take the bin and signs, and put it somewhere else.
Wet blanket is that biohazard exposure mitigation at volume becomes a huge concern. Literally to point of baseline and periodic blood monitoring for best practice.
Always hated those vapes for not having an easy way of reusing them. At least there is someone with a brain like you. Nice work!
if they just added a hole to put e liquid in and a charging port. That would not even pump the price up too much
@@MineCRAFTsalalala thats the point of making money
@@MineCRAFTsalalalaiirc apparently it's because selling the juice itself is illegal in the US, or at the very least tightly regulated.
You can get the juice from any smoke shop, and a lot of disposables have a usb-C port. You can technically reuse them a bit, but the wear item is the coil, so you're better off with a regular vape that uses swappable 18650s and replaceable coils.@@jaylopez6450
@@jaylopez6450but refillable mods have been around for years and the juice although tightly regulated you can get at most smoke shops or vape shops so it’s simply to generate more profit it the cancer debate if they can sell one treatment vs multiple treatments you make more selling more not selling one once forever
I worked in a smoke/vape store in the US as outgoing and product management during the rise of disposables. There are no recycling programs, no turn-in programs, nothing of the sort and its extremely disappointing just how many batteries get discarded in this manner. I always wanted to see someone making tech with these and its great content.
we have a 10 cent deposit on returning bottles and yet we're throwing lithium ion cells directly into the fucking trash..
They should charge an additional $5 deposit when buying disposable vapes and give it back if you return the empty vape.
@@achannelhasnoname5182 - I guess coming back full circle with regular cigarettes which carries an over 500% tax. A pack before taxes costs a few dollars, but after taxes over 10 bucks. Honestly disposable vapes should be banned outright, when Refillable/rechargeable vapes are so much better.
I guess going full circle with regular cigarettes which carries an over 500% tax. A pack before taxes costs a few dollars, but after taxes it's over 10 bucks. Honestly disposable vapes should be banned outright, refillable/rechargeable vapes are so much better.
I wonder if you could actually make money by collecting them... if the disposable vapes used one design it would be possible to automate the battery extraction process
Yes to more content like this, I will up my game in collecting cells, the things are everywhere, I dont have a 3d printer so would be interested in purchasing a kit of you or Mark. Great to see the younger generations helping to save the planet. good luck in all your ventures.💥
After overwhelming demand, I'm now working on releasing a kit so that anyone can easily build one! So stay tuned and subscribe if you haven't already :)
If you need help lmk i will help you. This is somthing we could use for our school project.
This is so cool
It would be really nice to gave enough instruction so someone without much experience could understand (and not burn down the house)
Thanks for this. I'd be happy to buy one and become a distributor if you would be interested
I'm down
Thanks again and I have just found the channel and subbed. Im alao sharing with my friends.
Great project! I used to make battery packs from discarded laptop batteries years ago, and I wanted to share some advice in case it helps anyone. You mentioned the final capacity being around 15,000mAh, but the concern with recycled cells is the capacity and health of each one, not just voltages. Someone may have already mentioned this in comments, but in my experience, testing each cell's capacity with a simple battery tester is key. It helps you weed out weak or unhealthy cells that could bring down the performance of the whole pack. even cells that get really warm while you lightly charge them should be discarded. you want healthy cells. (you can buy cheap simple testers online or even fancy expensive ones)
Then, after testing, let the good cells sit for a couple of weeks. If any lose significant voltage, they’re also likely unhealthy and should be excluded. Grouping cells with similar capacities together ensures a more reliable pack and will charge and discharge better. I know it's extra work, but it's important for anyone making larger packs, especially cases when you want to make a battery pack that will require large power draw like an E-bike battery. anyways awesome video man, really turning trash into something so useful.
i second this.
This comment deserves to be higher up.
As someone who makes 18650 packs from discarded cells, I can say this is excellent advice and is right on the money.
great advice, needs to be pinned!
Great advice, very very relevant!
These little cells are actually capable of a fair bit of current. I use a few on small FPV quadcopters and they handle the load fine.
how many amps you figure?
lol seen a vid of bot grinder trying this, didnt work too great on a 1s tiny woop ;(
5 to 10 amps realistically@@burtburtist
@@burtburtist a good rule of thumb for maximizing the life of a lithium cell is to not continuously discharge it faster than 1 full capacity per hour, aka 1C. So e.g. for a 1200mAh cell, that's 1.2A of maximum continuous current draw.
That being said, drones draw their current in big short gulps a lot of the time so spikes of 5-10 amps would be fine. I use a 10 Ah lithium cell to jump start my car and it handles 1-2 seconds of several hundred amps just fine.
DAMM I WISH I THOUGHT OF THAT
This is awesome. Ive been collecting and using vape batteries for about a year now. Used them to power a small drone, in a power bank, power source for an LED light in an outside take one leave one library with a solar panel, and in a light source for my 3D printer
As these vapes develops, a lot of them are starting to come with usable screens as well. I recently picked up a Lost Mary that has a long skinny LCD display on it. Crazy what we consider disposable.
There are plenty with much larger screens with Bluetooth capabilities and even video game emulation. It's ridiculous
@@paperman9708 But... why?
@@oz_jones theyre not for disposable ones tho thats for reusable ones
@@tangiers365 ive seen my roomate with disposable ones that have screens and show fancy patterns when its charging
Can it run doom?
Instructions unclear, now have a vape powered electric vehicle
You mean a Subaru?
@@Mitsuki424 LOL
Fat clouds bruh
I have a vape powered by a disposable electric car now
@@Texxmeks Me too. FTX Hooligan :P 1:10 scale :P
I'm a the head of our service department. We service our E-Scooters and i was able to make a 60Ah battery from all of the dead packs. You open them up, remove the damaged cells, take the ok cells and put them into a Li-Ion charger, to get the proper resistances and capacity and then use them with the ones that are similar to eachother.
These are 18650 cells, so easier to work with than the ones you're using, so it makes your video even more impressive. Great job on this!
Don't they go bad very fast?
@@lePuru as long as you keep them around 3.8v, they can survive for a while.
I've been running them in
Lights for years now I even use the type c charge ports that come with most been ok for me & I am using the lithium polymer cells they will draw a big amount of amps for a ebike battery though. I stared Way before people started making videos on them @@lePuru
hi i repair ebike and scooters too and was wondering where you guys are based. thank you and have a great day
@@lePuru No, usually the cells that die are due to the way a BMS works causing the cell(s) with the highest charge to end up going bad due to constantly charging them beyond their rated capacity. Also, letting the batteries sit uncharged for too long can cause some cells to go bad, but never have I seen them all be bad in any pack. If the pack is from a name brand tool, then the quality of the cells will be top notch. So long as you add a BMS to any battery you make with the cells, and actually maintain the charges properly, they make an excellent "free" source of the most expensive part of any project. I have built several eBikes, converted most of my devices to cordless using buck/boost converters and 3d printed battery housings, and recently I built a 16s9p battery for my eBike. I have had most of these batteries for over two years, and I have not had to repair or alter any of the batteries I have built using the reclaimed cells. If you pay attention you can find a plethora of usable cells at specific "box" stores in their conveniently placed recycle bins.
I absolutely love using the things people think are trash to make useful stuff, especially electronics or mechanical items
That's a real eye opener for me seeing lithium batteries being used in disposable products. Guess the global Li-ion supply chain is so streamlined that this is the most cost effective way for them to push out their product. I'm grateful for folks like you trying to spread awareness about this. Figure there will some day come a point where we will all need to learn how to scavenge like this once finite resources become scarce.
lithium is also the cheapest battery tech around that can do high current and small capacity at the same time. vapes draw a lot of current.
Of course, that doesn't absolve the wasteful design, rather it just goes to show that this product is a bad idea from the beginning. Better to stick to the old box mods than to use these.
@@tissuepaper9962there are a million vape alternatives that would emulate a disposable vape just minus the disposable part. We don’t have to force them to use the huge box mods few wanna use anymore
"Figure there will some day come a point where we will all need to learn how to scavenge like this once finite resources become scarce." - Here in Germany (and in most other EU countries) there are no (as in: zero!) active landfills for household waste. Everything is either recycled, composted or incinerated (thermal recycling). In this way, most raw materials such as lithium or rare earths are already in the country and we will be more or less independent of imports in the long term.
@@tissuepaper9962 also one of the most harmful battery tech to mine and make
Here in Ireland, they've, very successfully introduced a 'deposit and return' scheme for plastic bottles and aluminium cans. Disposable vapes, if you stuck a quid on each one, that you can get back upon return, 90% of the vapes on the streets and rubbish bins, would be recycled- overnight.
never thought that re-turn could work also in a situation like this, pretty cool idea
It's shocking how many advanced countries and states never bothered to implement bottle bills
Would probably work but just banning disposable vapes would be way better. Reusable vapes exist and work perfectly fine. So no reason to not ban the disposable ones
The issue with reusable vapes is that they use coils to vaporise the “vape juice” which tastes bad by comparison to these disposable ones that use sponge to secrete the liquid. They need to make reusable ones that copy the disposable ones designs as people won’t switch for an inferior experience.
Also, phenomenal video. A blend of passion for electronics, and also great editorial piece of e-waste. Keep doing what you’re doing, it’s inspiring
the reusable ones can taste just as good, they are essentially the same 'sponge design' you refer to. Reusable vapes have a coil that is wrapped in a cloth like material which holds the liquid you fill the tank with.
If you're in the UK alot of the reuseable vapes you come across are unregulated so the manufacturers can put anything they want in the juice. They stuff the juice in them with more untested/banned chemicals to achieve the strong sugary test. i'm talking about the brands that seem to come and go very fast
I just use longfills for the aroma and nicotine salt. This mix taste exactly the same as the disposables, no matter the device.
I don't know the reason but longfill aroma almost always tastes better than the normal one and the more expensive nicotine salt shots keep you from coughing unlike the normal nicotine shots.
you cant reuse a sponge setup more then twice well you can but it to a point that the sponge has absorbed so much dirt and crap from the air that its grey in color n cannot do its job anymore its also just false that wick style anything is gonna taste as good as a ceramic coil i hate those things but they last longer and you can hit them for longer then three seconds and not get a burnt tatse unlike wick coils or sponge coils whatever you folk wanna call em 😂
@@minekush1138 youre right, theyre "wick" coils. They defiently taste better. I've tried the same nic salts with a coil and it tastes nowhere near as good
@@petercruz1993 they've been around for a long time! RDA's and RTA's, both use coils or mesh ( just like disposable vapes) and tissue wadding in disposables is replaced with organic cotton in rebuildables (far superior at wicking compared to the foam reservoirs in disposables).
I am still using my trusty KangerTech pro plus and my Vandy Vape mesh RTA, brilliant bits of kit and give consistent vaping.
I have always found the whole idea of a disposable vape pretty insane, and wondered if there's a better way to reuse the internal components. This video not only answers that question, but also brings awareness to the massive issue at hand!
It's legislation and corporate takeover, nothing to do with economic recorse. I've watched thousands of US juice makers go out of business over the past 10 years. It's sad. I still have old mods that's used 18650s . 😅
I always wondered if this was possible after I accidentally discovered my phone could charge off a vape. Glad to see someone went through and tried it
I just tried this because of your comment and my vape started charging off my phone 🤣 but my phone said "this accessory uses too much power"
hahaha curious how that worked
This is what I’ve been saying! These vapes have alot of good electronics in them, especially the batteries. Some of them even have reprogrammable microcontrollers and small spi LCD screens. Just gone to absolute waste! I’ve actually started to collect these to disinfect and use to make VR body trackers. They work amazing for this since they’re so small and sometimes pretty high capacity.
I'm interested in how you make vr trackers at all, let alone with those batteries! Do you use valve tracking lighthouses?
Make a video just like this guy on how you're using them, would be cool.
@@P-Ianno one uses lighthouses anymore
@@garyhost354You're saying that they probably make VR trackers out of a vape that use inside-out tracking using a camera? Anyone who wants accurate tracking, especially for what (I assume is) tracking arms and legs, is using lighthouses.
Inside-out tracking is cool, but has inherent limitations...
This u Jayden?
Finally someone made this!
Banger of a first video, keep it up.
A series about reusing trivially disposed things like that would be welcome.
If anyone is interested, the channel DIY perks made a great video about this called
"Things you can make from old, dead laptops".
Just for anyone who might want to do this, your "cell balancing" board will prevent the cells from exploding but that is not a healthy way to balance lithium batteries and they could still potentially be damaged by doing it that way. The proper way is to charge or discharge them individually to either full or empty and then wire them to a proper balancing circuit
Can you elaborate on the easiest and cheapest way to do this?
@@timothybradford6652 You get a TP4056 module for each battery, wire all the 5v inputs in parallel, and wire all the 3.7v outputs in parallel with a Schottky diode on each positive BATTERYOUT+ terminal to prevent voltage backflow. Pair this with a switch between all the 3.7v outs and the boost module that converts that 3.7v to whatever 5v,9v,12v, etc., and that's it.
How do I know? Cause this is what im planning to do. Got over 80 vape batteries and counting ready to go.
@@NIGHTDREADED But that makes this expensive and tbh wiring a charging module to each cell sounds ridicusly stupid.
@@Tomas970506 No it doesn't, TP4056 in incredibly cheap and affordable. How is wiring each cell to a charge module stupid? It's individual charging and protection for each cell. What's stupid is using one module for 2+ cells.
@@NIGHTDREADED i will watch it
i been vaping for like 2 yrs and i’ve saved all my vapes in a big shoe store bag i’ve kept them for a reason like this! thank you
Worth their weight in gold those things.
if u been vaping for years… GET A REUSABLE stop supporting these horrible disposable for the environment
one of my favorite youtubers (chilli) is constantly finding vapes while litterpicking outside london and properly recycles them, but it's really cool to see them get reused in this way
I could see these being really useful in classrooms because there are limited outlets in many of them. Just use this baby and you’ve saved some students a lot of trouble!
😂😂 brings me back😂 i got screamed at over mt phone being plugged in she said i couldnt do that cuz someone could trip 😂 i then showed up the nect day with a heavy duty outdoor power cable like 25 feet long 😂 i wrapped it around my desk like three times around some elses desk then plugged my.phone into it 😂 i was menace back then i would.brimg three phones so even if one got taken away id still have one
This video was really inspiring! I don't vape, but I am an electrical engineer. I now want to visit parks after festivals and help with "trash" cleanup
Great concept, great visuals, great pacing. There's no way this is your first RUclips video. Cannot wait for the e-bike!
Bro what a great project. I don't understand this issue UK government has so many laws on everything yet nothing on selling, distribution and cleaning up of disposable vape.
You are actually making something useful out of which everyone thinks it's disposable.
They will make a law as soon as they figure out a way to make money off of it. Probably something like a 1$ flat tax per vape sold to "clean stuff up", instead of just making it easier and profitable to recycle e-waste.
They shoud just ban then, they provide no benefit and are massively wasteful. Its really not hard to refill and recharge a vape pen, cheaper too
You gotta understand mate, the last government had more pressing issues like those insidious gender neutral bathrooms
Some weirdos complain about Lithium being used for EV batteries (which can do hundreds of thousands of miles before being moved to second life or recycled) but say nothing about the tonnes of batteries dumped on the street after one use.
Great that you are doing something useful and also inspiring others!
So glad youtube recommended this to me. I have some CAD experience, but once you get to the point that you are happy with the finished product, you should upload the CAD files if you arent planning on making money off of it. I know that is probably what you meant by open source, but having the assembly files makes it way easier to tinker with and edit to make improvements. And i do believe that uploading a full tutorial, or even just a longer slower edit on how you made it would be great! I love having this kind of thing on in the background. You are doing the lords work saving the earth, in a way that is not only fun, but practical, and i wish more people had your philosophy on this sort of thing. Keep up the great work, and cant wait for any follow up videos you do!
I love this project. I have collected around 500 vapes from festivals. I select the cells based on voltage, then join them with uncoated copper wire to make the process fast. I only really make 3.7V power banks in a custom printed case, which I use to power strings of fairy lights.
That's delightful
Super idea I will start putting e-vape recycling boxes around
Its mind boggling that these things arent illegal. And I am surprised just how friggin popular they are. You would think someone wanting to vape, to actually buy a real vape and not these things.
Well, if vapes are illegal, they’ll still find a way through the black market. They need to be legalised and then regulated to hell and back if we are to go anywhere with vapes.
It's because of the flavors. Disposable have all sorts of flavors while normal vapes are just menthol and tobacco. Imo it was a dumb play to ban juul, vuse, ect. From selling other flavors since it gave rise to this.
@@alexmcaniff6446What the fuck are you talking about??? Go to any vape shop and there's all kinds of flavors for regular vapes, both with and without nicotine.
It's just a convenience thing because maintaining a vape mod takes some work.
It doesn't excuse the waste of such a precious material, but I've seen vending machines with these vapes in them. It's wild.
@@terrestrialTerror you in the UK? i think in america they had a lot of states ban flavoured vape liquids, but here we still get all the options
not to say it's not a problem here, you'd really think everyone would buy proper vapers by now
@@alexmcaniff6446There are 100000s of juices for standard vapes of all varieties, this is an incorrect statement.
The reason that disposable vapes are popular is that they are easy and convenient.
A buddy of mine started a recycling company based off of vapes called DVR and this is another great reuse video that I have come across
In my free time I took a solar trickle charger and used it to recharge a battery bank I made from the batteries..
People are surprised when I point out the little symbol on the bottom of their vapes, the "X" over the trashcan. I'm surprised there hasnt been some sort of lawsuit
Many places are considering banning them because they cause trash fires.
@@zaca211and fires in garbage trucks, forcing the truck to empty its load in the street
It happens more than you’d think
The prefered option seems to be smashing it against some sort of wall
It's the "not for human consumption" loophole lol
@@DaftKermitThePunkI don’t really see how. Regardless of if they’re sold for human consumption or not, manufactures still do nothing to stop their customers from throwing them in the trash. They straight up call them “disposable”.
You're a hero, literally. Who thought of using vape batteries as power banks?! This project is totally astonishing!
a few other people
bigclive did :)
Me
the tens of thousands of people collecting perfectly good lithium cells
I really want to try this
As someone who used to use disposable vapes and recharge them with a cut micro usb wire. This video is amazing.
that is true ecology
Very good video, its important to have people like you that clean our environment and even use it in the best was possible. I think if you do the marketing right and sell those powerbanks that would make a lot of profit. Huge compliment 👏
I don't know about the UK but in the US, the price per volume with the disposables is always better or the same as just a cart and your own battery. SO you typically get more puffs per dollar for a complete disposable vs, refilling or replacing carts. Which is why you see so many discarded disposables.
This is definitely true - and my bet is actually on convenience over efficiency or price sensitivity driving most demand.
Not in Poland, for the price of 3 disposables you get an Ursa Nano and for the price of 3 more you can mix 60ml of max strength e liquid. 60ml is like 30 disposables.
not true AT ALL!!! A 20$ bottle can last u months but 20$ in disposables is like a week or month… And u get wayy bigger hits
i absolutely love stuff like this. When your open source kit is available, I will likely build my own. I just need to start picking up all the disposable vapes I find in the street.
I LOVE when RUclips recommends a great video!
it does not happen often, thou
Thank you for this video! I have been despairing about the existence of single use vapes, you give me hope at least some people out there are making something of them
I honestly thought you were a big brand youtube until I saw your profile! Great editing, humour and project. Found this on reddit, subscribed and looking forward to your future projects.
Same , i hope the video for the e bike batteries comes out fast
yeaa underrated content
It looks like we started same year~ I screamed when these elfbars appeared... as disposable vape with Li-Ion batteries. So I am doing same projects and to be honest, all the smart home gadgets are running on them happily~
such a genius way of recycling those batteries, it is kind of an ideal business, probably
If it were profitable companies would already do it, but it's not.
Please do more videos with this, every cell of the street is a good thing. Adsense and awareness hopefully overshadow the labor and cost.
Just built a huge e-bike battery from them, so hopefully ill have a video uploaded in about 2-3 weeks time!
Finally! I keep collecting used vapes from neighbours without a plan, now I know what to do! Please keep the videos coming, very inspiring!
Thank you for doing this, nothing makes me angrier than seeing disposable vapes with a li-ion battery in it.
Such a complete and utter waste of resources.
They should slap a 10$ deposit on these things.
Fun DiY project ✅
Well explained technical concepts ✅
Positive impact ✅
Hint of madness ✅
SUBSCRIBED!
on point
Go green✅
People don't realize how innovative this is. We are at the start of a lithium and cobalt crises. The demand rises so fast there might even be wars fought over this. Than this English bloke comes along and just starts to make unlimited amount of powerbanks.
It's not innovative in any way. Manufacturers won't recycle until producing new is cheaper than recycling.
@@pcrolandhu Yeah right, because you and everyone you know has been doing this since you can remember. Totally normal
I've been saving mine for a couple years. I like using the screens and usb c ports. The batteries are great for rc planes and cars
@@omary5439 I'm proud of you. If you were near me I'd kiss your forehead and wished you the best in life.
@@moslimislam5714 thank you Habibi, wish I could quit the vape tho :(
One thing to improve the battery pack's reliable power output, would be to
1. Use a spot welder and nickel strips (I know, it's tedious, but what can you do?)
2. Measure each cell's internal resistance and actual capacity (it takes time, but in the end you have a better balanced battery, so you get to use more of the capacity available)
Sadly you can't spot weld to these. They don't have connections like 18650s, they only have very thin 3mm long nickel strips as contacts
@@sushi3377 fair point. 👍
The internal resistance and capacity are my main concerns why i didn`t try it myself. They differ way to much and because the tabs are so shitty to connect, there is no solid way to measure the internal resistance because the measurement can`t be accurate enough. Once i measured like 5 of these 500 mAh Cells and the capacity was like more between 480-400 mAh, i measured the capacity with a discharging rate of 1C .
(Thats way to much diffrence to get them properly balanced, since the cells on the lower capacity end are basically EOL with only 75% left capacity.).
@@aivazijust replace the dying cells as you go. there's no need to get to a high level of optimization when you're literally reclaiming trash. If you have cell balancing and testing equipment then go for it, but otherwise it just doesn't matter in this case. Using the cells at all is better than allowing them to go in the trash or get run over by a car.
Some of them are 18650's
I haven't even watched a quarter of the video, but I'm already subscribing for the amount of recycling you're doing. My guy, you're doing wonders for RUclips entertainment, DIY enthusiasts, AND pollution.
Been making powerbanks for friends to take on to off grid places for some years now... the amount of disposed batteries is unbelievable. Keep it up!
Im glad someone is doing this. Ive asked so many people to save their okd vapes so i can salvage them and no one does.
I thank you for your ACTUAL contribution to our economy.
I've made thosands of these. The best thing about them is that they are safe. If they develop an internal short they tend to leak or get hot, but they never explode.
Best of all,.you are saving precious lithium from landfill! Nice job!
where do you get the vapes?
Vape shops have little recycling bins. If you ask them they are happy to let you take them. But be careful, the quality of the cells is questionable! I always check the internal resistance and capacity of each cell, as well as other precautions (cell matching in packs etc)
i would love a part 2 with the upgraded version of this pack and other ideas with these batteries will be so cool
I’ve worked in I.T and telecommunications, with that knowledge I can’t stand throwing these things away….I recognize that using them is already part of the problem personally and environmentally, but I appreciate this idea to use the box of deads I have. THANK YOU! I now have a project for our camping truck.
"Nobody seems to know" apart from all of big Clive's subscribers who have now been doing this for years. Made my 3rd power bank this week and have made about 6 rechargable torches also using the case of the bigger vapes.
Honestly, I've been looking out for them but I haven't been able to find any that haven't been smushed flat by cars
I'm assuming everyone just puts things in the bin where I live which, I suppose that's good but nobody should be throwing these away
nobody as in the people who toss vapes to the side...
This is the first one I have seen using PCB for the interconnects between cells. I've avoided because I didn't want to solder them or deal with those spot welders. This is a great idea!
@@sandwich2473We had a fire at the recycling centre near Perth because of them I believe.
It’s relative. Maybe .0001% people are doing this
You could use heat-press threaded inserts to hold the two PCBs down, and I'd suggest using nylon bolts
The airport security when I show them my new Powerbank: 👁👄👁
Amazing. Quick safety note for others; Chris is a pro [my gosh the PCB is genius] - as for if you're wrapping sides of batteries, with copper (like in video). make sure the sides are at least like seen in this vid - coated... though not entirely recommended - under any coating is pure way for short circuit - even with time, best to be careful!
Absolute legend man, please keep on doing what you're doing. Can't wait for your next project
People like yourself make me so hopeful for the future. One comment is that "enjoy it while it lasts", because when the intrinsic value of e-vape batteries increases there will be incentive to collect them, the fact that We're strip mining the planet for lithium when it's being tossed away by the ton is already insanity.
Finally, someone who understands! As a vape collector (and chronic nicotine addict myself) these vapes make me feel like garbage to see them tossed away. I've been asking around and looking for dead vapes that I get to salvage the battery out of, and now even my Oculus controllers are rechargable! Another good tip for anyone passing through: if you either can't get a bms or are just impatient, the rechargable disposables such as the Mr. Fog and Norths come with a "free" protection circuit and charging port for single cells. All you need to do is use the output that used to go to the pressure sensor most of the time, though every vape is different so make sure to examine the pcb.
Actually super smart. You can genuinely repurpose quite a bit from disposables
The problem i have seen with trying to repurpose the electronics as they are from the factory is most don't output the right power or safely control the battery without pulling from the coil supply. And they are generally designed to only activate for at most 10 seconds to prevent damage. I'm really asking around to see what can be done!
END OF LINE
@@jerrt I'm a little confused by what you mean, but I think I understand lol. For the wrong power output, I've personally never seen this. What you may be mixed up with is the mislabeled capacity of these cells. Typically they tend to over advertise the specification, for example the "800mah" capacity cells I measure tend to be around 600mah actual. The voltage, however, I've always seen be consistent as the battery chemistry should dictate a max deviation of ~2.8-4.2 volts depending on charge level. Most vape companies foresee this and add voltage regulators to output a stable ~3 or ~3.3 volts. If you've got a really fancy one, maybe there's even boost converter for pushing 5 volts.
As for the 10-second issue it appears to be a built in functionality for the majority of 3-pin pressure sensors, and the board itself only handles power delivery and the vape specialties such as a screen and whatever else. This means you should be able to salvage power from the input pin as it always flows into the sensor, where pulling from the vape is what lets that input power through to the coil for a maximum of 10 seconds. From testing with the new Fog switch and North bar, I'm able to reliably use their boards for some simple projects with constant power flow. However, I do think it's worth noting that these shouldn't be your end all be all bms, other features on the board are just going to slowly eat your battery charge.
EDIT: The input pin in this case is the input pin for the pressure sensor. The output pin I'm referencing in my original comment is the same, I just meant output from the board 😅
@@TrashStash I did miss type a bit. Usually voltages levels aren't the issue. just reliably getting constant supply. I have not tinkered with the newer units as much so I will definitely look into tapping into supply right before the sensor. Thank you for that Thought!
I do want to get access to the controller chips more directly. To either extract for other projects or to disable lights and things that I wouldn't want draining voltage.
END OF LINE
I love that not only are you able to make something valuable out of free trash, you're also keeping these out of a landfill *and* lowering the demand for new lithium just a lil
I couldn't believe the views and your subscriber count after I watched this video! This is down right professional, on the levels of other DIY youtubers or even better! I subscribed immediately! The only other thing I could wish for would be for you to provide links to the schematics and components for the project, like the board and 3D prints (although I can understand you not wanting to share them because they're perhaps not really ideal by your standards and could be developer further, but it would still be great if we could get the schematics for reference). Thank youb for this video!
Nah, it's better by a long way. Getting Tim Hunkin vibes.
A friend of mine was giving me his old vapes. I don't have this many but this makes me want to get a 3D printer just to build one of these myself haha
Nice to know I'm not the only one out there. I'm doing the exact same thing. The vape industry is slowly switching to super-capacitors, which is a good thing. Well done!
What's even better is not making disposable electronics in the first place though, why tf are people even willing to buy such things
They might *look* like capacitors, but watch out: many of them are still LiPos inside. Just watch the video that BigClive made about them.
Lipos are fine, throwing them out isn't. People should just go back to re fillable l, rechargeable pens. It'd also just be cheaper
@@CAMSLAYER13 people don't like changing coils or replacing cotton and they don't like getting vape juice on their fingers every time they refill the tank. comfort and convenience always win against environmental concerns.
Super cool. Love the ingenuity and craftsmanship.
I would absolutely buy something like this as a kit - I don’t have a 3D printer or any soldering experience, but being able to crack open some litter off the street and slide the cells into a sleeve and screw it together would be amazing.
The balancing connector on the power bank module is also used for charging, since Li-Ion cells can have wildly varying internal resistance and capacity, thus, some charge faster, some slower. If you just slapped the full pack voltage across it, some cells might not be charged fully, while some could get overcharged, without exceeding the maximum pack voltage - thus, the balancing leads - every cell (or parallel pack) is charged separately up to its voltage, without risking overcharging
I think "balance leads" are actually discharge leads historically. You can connect them at any point and they will discharge higher voltage cells to the same level as the low voltage cells. A charger capable of "balancing" using these leads probably will have a heatsink or an aluminum body to release the waste heat. Kind of weird that it doesn't just charge some cells faster.
@@compjellythe BMS doesn't "just charge some cells faster" for the same reason that you don't put a 12-tap, 12-knob spigot in your sink to optimize the filling of the ice tray. You just fill it up until every cell is overflowing and then bam, they're all even. The extra components and complexity are not justified by the small amount of water that would be saved.
The point of my analogy is that a BMS that charged e.g. 5 different banks of cells individually, that's really just 5 BMSs and would cost an appropriate amount more.
@@tissuepaper9962 @bednar121 well there you go
@@compjelly Correct, these are called passive balancers and are most popular. It needs only one load resistor and transistor per cell. The max. balancing current is quite low (
Excellent work, just two things you could easily improve: size and weight, you don't need so much plastic around the cells plus the bolts, a lots of unnecessary metal.
yeah but unnecessary metal looks fucking rad as hell
Chris said somewhere that the PCBs were too thin/flimsy and wouldn’t be able to make contact with the terminals constantly, so he just put in a bunch of bolts to increase the sturdiness and make sure all the terminals made contact all the time.
Never knew the disposable vapes used lithium batteries, if it's just getting thrown away after why not just use cheap alkaline batteries?
The only reason I can think of is to take advantage li-ions high discharge current for the heating element and the well established supply chain. Its terrible that we are already running low on rare earth materials and they are being used in disposable products
or li pri cells? it's the current, mass production, r&d
li-ion is basically only cell nowadays
that's why many people keep them then going to a battery recycle plant
An alkaline cell will only be at about 1.5v where the lithium cell is at 3.7v.
@@brine80charged it's about 4.2, discharges to 3.2 usually. They are the most energy dense out of tech we have right now and have a high discharge rating 10-25 amps on disposables usually.
France and Belgium have already banned & outlawed these disposable vapes (Starting Jan 12025), and knowing the EU, more countries will follow suit shortly.
But still, it's great to see someone raisin awareness about the ecological impact and reusability as well.
Great video!
10:01 I prefer the original case with the extra space. The more space between the cells, the better thermal wise. There should be room left for extra heat to dissipate and escape into the environment. The bolts, I should think, help greatly towards that end. If the bolts were made of aluminium and tied to a plate on each side, that would help even more. The downside would be that the construction should be inspected carefully for the possibility of creating shorts. Another idea would be to create vent holes on the two boards and have these holes go all the way through the cells' holder in order to increase the amount fo heat escaping through ventilation.
Anyone who watches this great video and decides to take apart a vape, PLEASE do it with gloves on and do not get the vape juice/liquid everywhere!
It is extremely potent and can be absorbed through the skin which can give you nicotine poisoning. I have personal experience of this from when I decided to do exactly that and, being a thin person, I absorbed a lot of the liquid through my skin, not knowing how potent it was and suffered from head, neck and back aches for weeks until I realised where it was coming from.
I was already being careful not to contaminate myself which means that it could have been a lot worse. What I didn't realise to begin with is that the liquid is not only on the inside of the sponge, but also on the outside of the clear plastic around it which I held. It was also on the inside of the tube and on every surface the sponge module came into contact with.
If you do use gloves, please be responsible with them and not touch everything after the sponge because that will contaminate your environment, and dispose of the sponge and gloves responsibly (idk how nicotine can be disposed but look it up).
@1oblob please could you either edit and reupload this video or put it in the next one because this is very important information.
Weird I didn't wear gloves and I didn't feel anything 🤔
You sure glycerin and propylenglycol go through the skin?
@nowonmetube the glycerin won't. However nicotine will absorb through your skin and it is actually ridiculously toxic
@@nowonmetube it definitely absorbs i vape and any time i get juice on my hands or lips it's way stronger than hitting a vape and nearly makes me sick
i dont believe you can suffer from neck, and back aches from nicotine... lol
@@humble2246 yeah but I still wouldn't take a bath in the 5-7% nicotine vape juice that they put in these things. There's no way that wouldn't have an effect on your nervous system.
3:28 It's look like C4 Bomb
as someone who regularly dumpster dives at a smoke shop and gets hundreds of vapes per month, i may do the same after doing some safety research, so thanks for sharing as i wasnt sure what else to do with them
They fact that you made a pcb just to balance charge them is pretty wild.
pcb: $5
frustration from wiring up to these shitty little cells with tiny little terminals by hand: 5 years off the end of your life
It’s just a PCB with a few resistors bro nothing crazy
You could achieve this without a PCB
@@_EyeOfTheTigerhaving done this myself, fucking don't. Wish I'd thought of the PCB idea years ago. I can afford $15 worth of PCBs to save myself hours of hassle, flux fumes, and burns.
@@Phoen1x883 couldn't you just charge them all to the same voltage individually with a power supply?
I was in russia a few months ago and my friend found out about how easy it is to repurpose these, and he has collected over a thousand in a huge array, and he said he’s going to sell smaller ones on an unofficial basis to fund proper disposal in his area; pretty cool!
Not a bad idea, definitely worth soldering the nickel tabs instead of the copper tape though. A good soldering iron can solder 16awg wire to them pretty easy given you use good solder & flux. Ive been doing this for about 3 and a half years now. Made usb power banks, 12v packs, small 36v packs, replaced 2xAA batteries with a single 13400... Theyre awesome lil cells, but damn do they get spicy if you damage them 😂🔥🎇
Soldering anything to Lithum batteries is a terrible idea. Just don't do it. You will damage the batteries, even though you might not notice it at first.
Just use spot welding to minimize the heat contamination and have a solid connection.
Your video helped me understand just how ridiculous the disposable vape industry is. With the added bonus of learning how to make my own charging bank. *subscribed
I wish you had mentioned that battery banks are only as capable as their weakest cell.
If anyone is gathering batteries while waiting for a tutorial, make sure to fully charge all of your cells and keep only the highest capacity cells. If any of them are 0.5V lower than your best cell, save it for a stand-alone project or send it to the recycling center. If there are any markings on the batteries, you should also try to find ones with similar amp/hour ratings. Just because two batteries are the same physical size does not mean they have the same internal design. Voltage comes from the chemistry, but capacity comes from the thinness of the materials and condition of the electrolyte.
since most of the ones he collected seem to be of the same brand, it's safe to assume they come from the same factory & would have nearly identical batteries...
@@MG-kw1kb Not necessarily. You can get two identical laptops or power tools from the same manufacture year and they often have two different brands of battery in their packs.
Since these use individual batteries, are intended to be one-time-use and have little to no regulation, these factories can maximize profits by utilizing whatever crappy, possibly used batteries they can get their hands on.
@@dhawthorne1634 I dont think your theory adapts to this batterys ... your point isnt wrong but to me this shouldnt be a problem if he uses same product with same battery (by looking) sure there is a possibility that manufactorys change something overtime... but i wouldn't assume thats the case for these batterys... but overall your pont isnt wrong and should be mentioned... in a way he did mention it by comparing the small and the bigger vape to each other
TBH, I think keeping the cells spaced out is a better idea. In the event of a single cell's violent failure, that at least MAY help avoid a chain reaction.
good video. your video might be youtube blessed, this was good information in reducing waste easily and cheaply. very nice.
This is amazing, from idea to execution, not forgetting about the noble motivation to raise awareness about the disposable vape recycling problem!
You just earned a subscriber eagerly awaiting for more updates on this topic, keep up the good work!
Nice project. Could maybe use some more nuts and bolts...
at 8:17 it looks like a bomb
It is😂
0:07 pov british secondary school kids
This was so sick I can really appreciate someone who can think outside the box and reuse daily things in this world to benefit ourselves!