Monstrous USB Power Bank

At some point, cleaning out the spare parts bin — or cabinet, or garage — becomes a necessity. This is dangerous because it can induce many more project ideas and completely negate the original purpose. [Chaotic Mind], considering the pile of  batteries he’s collected over the past decade, decided that instead of throwing them out, he would recycle them into a grotesque USB power bank.

Inside the bulk of this power bank are an eye-popping 64 18650 Lithium Ion cells, mostly collected from laptop batteries, and wired in a parallel 8×8 pattern with an estimated capacity of over 100,000mAh(!!).  The gatekeeper to all this stored energy is a two-USB power bank charger board from Tindie.

Ah — but how to package all this power? The handy man’s secret weapon: duct-tape!

This brick of batteries is probably unwieldy for most daily use purposes, but we can see it having a place on an extended camping trip or the like. It is still a huge potential danger as there isn’t any charge balancing integrated into the bank, and the potential for catastrophic failure of any of the smaller or older cells is immense considering the amount of time it takes for this monster to charge — it took two hours to charge from 90% to 91% at 1.2A.

At least [Chaotic Mind] has his fire extinguisher handy!

We’ve previously featured a guide on how to hack together your own power bank if you need one, or feel like taking the concept to the limit.

Filed under: hardware

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