Sparks when pulling apart packs

So this evening I was pulling apart a few packs and i could see sparks coming from the battery and the boards as I was ripping off the plastic. I may have touched the pliers to the battery and the wires however this got me concerned about batteries blowing up.

Has anyone else experienced sparking when pulling packs apart. And if they do spark, should the batteries be discarded or are they OK to continue testing (charge and discharge).

This is the supply so far. Hard work pulling some of these packs apart.

SimonDewar said:

So this evening I was pulling apart a few packs and i could see sparks coming from the battery and the boards as I was ripping off the plastic. I may have touched the pliers to the battery and the wires however this got me concerned about batteries blowing up.

Has anyone else experienced sparking when pulling packs apart. And if they do spark, should the batteries be discarded or are they OK to continue testing (charge and discharge).

This is the supply so far. Hard work pulling some of these packs apart.

Click to expand...

Hi Simon, yes I have had this happen to me. You shorted the pack out, you might have damaged a cell. These cells are typically in a weekend states exercise great care not to fully discharge.

IF open from the side... maybe there's a chance you can disconnect from the positive or negative ends... that will prevent shorting if it helps.

Thanks for this. The voltage on some of these batteries where 4.5 - 4.8 which I thought was quite high.

If these ones need a lot of care when discharging, is it better to not use them at all?

I personally wouldn't worry about sparking cells during ripping apart. So as long as the sparks are short lived. That just shows the cells are good out of the box

I've had one where the tab had cut a little through the casing the pos tabbing had made contact with the neg shell. I didn't notice it at first as I didn't see the spark, but a few seconds later I did spell plastic burning. After finding which cells were causing the issue, I got it pulled apart. Afterwards, the cells were fine. I doubt there were very many cycles that were lost during the shorting, if any at all.

I think they'll be ok. It's not like they were under constant short circuit till stuff started melting. At that point, I'd been worried about that cell.

Power tool batteries are much sparkier :s

I wouldn't worry too much, its a prolonged short you want to avoid

Just rip it fast. Sparks will happen but as long as you dont hesitate thats not an issue. Just make sure you done leave any short