Ask HN: Any hope for removable, rechargable battery standards? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any hope for removable, rechargable battery standards?

44 pointscandiddevmike68 comments

I have so many batteries for things like power tools, vacuum cleaners, and even some kid toys that all seem like they have similar volt/amps but are not interchangeable. None of the adapters are the same, and it's getting harder to find replacements online for the more niche battery types.

Will we ever see something like B&Ds battery packs standardized so I can have a whole rack of them and use them with everything?

Seems nuts to think about if we didn't have AA/AAA batteries and every company had their own standard...

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It's not a standards problem but a market incentives one. Companies make too much money off expensive shitty proprietary batteries. It's the razor blade model + brand lock-in for powered goods, especially power tools and vacuums and such. They can sell you $5 worth of batteries inside a $80 plastic shell. No company is going to give that up willingly.

If you standardized them, it'd be a race to the bottom and China would win.

Maybe the EU would have that kind of willpower (like they did with micro usb) but it'd be politically impossible in the US, and every company from computer to power tool manufacturers would lobby against you.

With power tools, it’s more than that. It’s not just that you keep needing to buy their batteries if they die. It’s that once you have the battery for one, you are much more likely to buy their other products when the need arises. That way you either have multiple interchangeable batteries, or you can save money by not needing to get another battery with the main product.

Good thing is that once you decide to lock in into particular brand you can have interchangeable batteries for machines... Whoops.. What's that? New line of products with new battery standard?

Manufactures don't do that often. They might have a couple different battery lines, but everytime there is a new standard buyers have opportunity to check out the competition. I standardized on Dewalt 20/60 volt tools, I don't even look at other brands anymore as then I need to invest in batteries when I already have plenty of batteries so Dewalt is almost always cheaper because I'm buying a tool without a battery,

Sometimes a 12volt tool looks good (lighter), but so far I don't have any. If I ever do I'll be comparing all the brands (and their catalog) to see which I think is best, already having Dewalt 20 volt tools gives them no advantage (My dewalt radio can take 12 or 20 volt batteries, but that isn't enough of an advantage)

You have to effectively marry your power tool provider to get worthwhile economies of scale.

I wonder if there's a market for battery adapter-shims? (then they'd start doing HP-ink-level shenanigans, if they're not already).

Looks like CharlesW answered my question before I asked it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507481

This has been likened to a sorting hat for dads.

https://x.com/andykreed/status/1741888763083604090

Green and red are technically under the same corporate owner.

https://tool-kit.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/power-tool-br...

Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw always seemed pretty much the same to me anyways

I'm not had much luck with the "save money by not needed to get another battery" part. The local stores have only had the tools in the bundles which include the battery and charger.

Amazon has usually had the tool without a battery and charger but many more sellers had the tool with battery and charger and those were actually cheaper due to sale prices or due to the tool only not being Prime and having high shipping cost.

So I've ended up with the 3 batteries and 3 chargers for my 4 Black & Decker cordless tools. (It's only not one for one because the first purchase was a bundle of a string trimmer and hedge trimmer with one charger and battery).

I'll probably need to buy an oscillating multi-tool next summer and am thinking of going with something other than Black & Decker. That way the next time after that when I need a tool (probably a paint sprayer) my chances will be twice as good that I can find one unbundled that matches one of my existing battery systems.

This is really true.

Or you hold off on buying other tools because you want to be in a different battery/tool family.

There are convertors for batteries though, so I should probably consider that.

> If you standardized them, it'd be a race to the bottom and China would win.

I happen to be a manual razor shaver and I found your analogy to this field rather interesting. Safety razor is a standardized market where all blades will fit all razors, and yet

1. You don't see anyone selling their own proprietary blade size. 2. China doesn't actually win this market. A few well-known brands that I've used: Feather (Japanese), Merkur (German), Astra (Turkey) and now I'm trying some Indian blades.

Well shaving has been around from 1000s of years, there isn't really any room to innovate, and the rechargable batteries have been around for ~150 years and improvements are still being made.

I mean, it felt like a joke in 2004 [1], but Gillete pulled off a 5 blade razor in 2005, and if that's not innovation in shaving, I dunno what is.

[1] https://theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-...

The market incentives work the other way too. While some companies are incentivized to put a lot of effort into making their own proprietary standard to lock you in, a lot of other cheap products have no incentive to make that effort as it adds cost to the process. It’s easier and cheaper to buy exactly what you need from the battery factory than it would be to study and properly implement a standard.

> If you standardized them, it'd be a race to the bottom and China would win.

Is China not making most of the world’s batteries at this time? I don’t think this is a reason not to standardize.

You can still charge $80 for the proprietary plastic shell.

Yes. Which is epoxied shut and requires you to virtually destroy the shell to get to the cells inside as I recently discovered trying to refurbish my Dewalt batteries.

Well, it's not just the country of origin on its own, but the branding of different companies.

When you have bare cells, anyone can make them, and within a few years it'll all just be Amazon Basics or Costco batteries inside everything.

When you add a plastic enclosure around those cells, suddenly it's a Makita or Milwaukee or whatever brand battery that their manufacturer can tightly control.

I'm not arguing against standardization, BTW (as a consumer I'd love to be able to pop my headlight 18650 cells into my laptop or power tool), just saying that it's extremely unlikely because the financial forces against it are way too strong. And in the land of the free, our regulations are anything but. No way industry would let this happen, and no way our government is strong enough to unilaterally force it through.

Amazon and Costco would be a step up from what's in a lot of counterfeit tool batteries today.

So, the same reason we can't all agree on one charging standard?

There are semistandard cylindrical Li-ion cells. Common sizes include 14500 (14x50mm; AA-size), 18650, and 21700. Many devices with built-in or proprietary batteries use these cells, but it seems like flashlights are the only category where they're usually removable and not housed in a proprietary case.

I've owned bluetooth speakers and handheld fans that run on a single 18650. For many other product categories, the reasons they don't are mostly counter to the interests of consumers, but market demand doesn't seem to be strong enough to change this.

The closest we've got nowadays is, IMO, 18650 cells - they're manufactured by a lot of different companies, and you can (usually) put them in anything that expects that size + capacity.

I think many of those power tool batteries are 18650 or 21700 batteries soldered together under the shell. Laptops used to be, but as they've gotten slimmer and more space-conscious, now have mostly moved to custom pouch designs.

> batteries soldered together under the shell.

They are not soldered. They are spot welded to bus bars. The distinction matters because the long duration of heat from a soldering iron will destroy Li-ion cells. A spot welder delivers more heat over a shorter time. This doesn't damage the cells.

Yep, someone should design a shell that you could 3d print and drop in 18650s to run power tools for Dewalt/Makita/etc. Connecting the batteries is kind of annoying but presumably there's some standard spring clips off the shelf that might work.

FWIW, power tools batterie are generally high amp rated and require a BMS that can support it. Not that you can't do it, but won't work with off the shelf 18650s.

I looked up teardowns of Dewalt, Milwaukee, and Makita battery packs and saw LG HB4, Samsung 30Q, and LG HD2 cells, respectively. Those are all off the shelf cells.

Any hope for removable, replaceable razor blade standards?

Any hope for removable, replaceable inkjet cartridge standards?

But batteries are way way more ubiquitous no?

I’m not sure I see the point with disposable razor blades. The handles are essentially given away.

I can't even tell if this is satire or not. Razor blades are replaceable and interchangeable, that's their whole thing.

He means disposable shaving multirazor heads which are definitely not interchangeable.

Old style razor blades for DE safety razors are also still sold, and standard. People have their brand of choice based on shave qualify, but the blade holder will accept any of them.

It’s an interesting glimpse into the future of batteries, because there are exactly the same incentives involved with batteries and modern razors:

The GGP poster has never in their life ever seen the traditional interchangeable standard double blades and razor, can’t even conceive that it was and is an option.

Many people in the future will never in their life ever see interchangeable AA/AAA/C/D cells, and won’t be able to conceive it was and is an option.

There are standardized battery formats in industry. For example professional video. There are also industrial products standardized around consumer battery formats.

But for consumer commodities like cordless drills, there are financial incentives toward bespoke interfaces protected with intellectual property laws.

I run mower batteries in my eBike (40V) but it requires a 3d printed adapter to pigtail leads.

The main gripe i have is the greenworks started adding DRM on one of the pins so I can't run in reverse: my large non greenworks 40V battery cannot power any of their tools.

Milwaukee M12 tool batteries are a little different, their cells are not protected from over discharge internally (the tool uses 3 pins to monitor). So this is something to watch out for.

A standard battery would be ideal. 4.2V fully charged cells are everywhere and if protected, series/parallel configurations could cover so many bases and eliminate a lot of waste.

Where could we pressure a few cross platform uses? So far it's been eBike/Lawncare batts for me. Pretty safe if you respect the discharge/charge rates.

> The main gripe i have is the greenworks started adding DRM on one of the pins so I can't run in reverse: my large non greenworks 40V battery cannot power any of their tools.

Imagine being the developer tasked with implementing such anti-consumer crap.

I'd like to think I'd flip off my boss and quit on the spot if I were they. Thankfully, I've yet to be handed such an opportunity.

I do the same with EGO 52 volt batteries. These also have no unedrvolt/over-discharge* protection but for me this is better because my controller handles that and I can regen brake (p sure you can't with I assume you're talking about Ryobi 40v as they're the most common maker I've seen of that standard for power tools.)

*This is also true for Dewalt 20v.

For power tools at least they're mostly if not all 18v these days. You can get adapters to use tools from brand A with batteries from brand B. Works great in a pinch, but I'd certainly prefer an open standard.

18v and 20v batteries are interchangeable. But I probably wouldn't use a 24v Kobalt battery in an 18v tool. Kobalt batteries are really closer to 22 or 23v but still the difference from 18v might be enough to overheat the motor in your tool.

Has anyone here used power tool battery adapters? https://powertoolsadapters.com/

Yes. They work fine. Just don't use them for charging. Charge all batteries in the original charger they were designed for.

I know that my dad had some from Dewalt 20 volt to same for several other brands that he likes,and I have utilized. Not sure if from the same company. I believe you can 3d print some on thingiverse.com from what i recall as well, and use a parts list supplied for the wiring.

Note: Dewalt 20 volts have no over discharge protection built into their BMS so be aware of that if using a 3d printed adapter.

These make tools run, but they're dangerous because they break the safety battery safety features which are built into the tool. With the exceptions of Ryobi and Makita, most power tool battery safety features are built in to the tools, and they communicate to the battery. At minimum, they check a thermistor. More sophisticated schemes can query the battery for shutoff voltage and maximum current.

Hey! You might be interested by what we're building at Gouach

We're engineers/designers from France, and we've built the Ultimate DIY Battery that you can repair and refill!

It works with 90% of the bikes/motor brands on the market, so I assumed that some people here might be interested, if they got a non-functional batteries but they still want to use their e-bike?

We believe that everybody should have control about stuff they own, and we should fight against planned obsolescence!

Here are a few videos about our founder on the battery itself, why we built it, and how to assemble it:

- What is the Gouach Battery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsuW1NPkvNk

- Presentation of the pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLoCihE0eIA

- Presentation of the fireproof and waterproof casing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDJpt7RDbRM

Here are the juicy bits: https://docs.gouach.com

We'd love some feedback from the e-bike DIY builder community

Oh, and it's launching as a Kickstarter in September and there is an offer for early-backers here https://get.gouach.com/1 for a 25% discount on the battery!

You can follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gouach.batteries to get the latest news!

This seems cool but unlikely something I'd use. There's two types of people who will be building their own e-bike batteries:

1. cheap bastards hoarding broken tool packs to tear down and make a pack with mixed cells. The hard part here isn't welding it's testing and sorting the cells by ir and capacity.(edit: me)

2. People building very high performance bikes at 72-100 volts and very high amperage, likely not using 18650s.

In both cases I'd be curious to know if there's a difference in maximum current between a welded pack and your clamped design.

This is exactly what I was wondering when I first saw Guarch (great videos btw). Is this something that users of regular Bosch batteries would benefit?

I’m assuming that those commercial battery packs have a good BMS and temperature control, basically preventing most fires. Then, at the same time I saw those rugged charging boxes. Would regular customers benefit from a more sturdy battery design like yours?

The sturdiness of the housing seems important. My cell phone was run over by a semi truck and the only part not affected was the battery because it had a recessed aluminum thing for it.

Distrust any BMS that has a charging port that is separate from the discharge port. Handle undervolt/over current on the controller, or if you wanna be really bootleg a plain old fuse and a voltmeter you watch manually.

I'm still in the process of building a ebike battery, but these are things I've learned from disassembling a number of different packs. The exception is Milwaukee 20v seems to handle protection on board pretty well.

Edit: Grauch my only concern with it is the sturdiness of the contact with the cells with no spot welds. If this is intended to be used with recycled cells there can be some slight tolerance issues from removing previous spot welds.

I get close enough by standardizing on Dewalt tools. Large catalog of good tools use it. there are other good choices the larger point isn't the brand but the decision before buying to choose which battery system to get on and then stay on it. if dewalt introduces a different battery I will look at their competion again.

True. And a couple other points from someone invested in the Milwaukee ecosystem (which I assume are similarly true for Dewalt and others). The batteries are common enough that knockoffs are readily available. This would seem to be the objective - competition among battery suppliers. The problem is the off-brand batteries are hit and miss at best. I still have the first two M18 batteries I bought at least twelve years ago. They've been charged countless times and are still going strong. The branded batteries are annoyingly expensive, and yet worth the money in my experience. On the other side of the equation, there are plenty of off-brand accessories that utilize the batteries. I have an LED shop light that uses them, for example. And beyond that there are little adapters that attach to the batteries with wires that let you power whatever at 18v. My kids just participated in a power wheels "demolition derby" last weekend (they attach balloons to the power wheels and the kids pop each other's balloons). Both of their power wheels were borrowed from different people, and both were converted to run off Milwaukee M18 batteries. I'd wager most of the rest out there were too.

I photo/video lights from Neweer that use a Sony standard battery which may or may not be made by Sony. This seems to be because media creators already have these batteries/chargers. So maybe sometimes the market does give people what they want. It has to be enough to influence the puchasing decision.

For external battery packs 3D printed adapters are starting to become more available. Unfortunately there's too much profit in proprietary packs and device replacement due to failed internal batteries. Safety concerns are just plausible enough that nobody in government wants to stick their neck out for it.

The batteries inside the case are mostly the same: 18650 cells or something close to that. What varies is the number of cells and the plastic case they're wrapped in.

There exist case adapters that allow you to use e.g. a Makita battery on a B&D tool; you can find them on Amazon. As long as the voltages are close, they work. (Don't use adapters for charging! Only use them for powering equipment.)

If you know what you're doing you can even replace the cells in the case yourself. But I must emphasize the caveat above; this can be incredibly dangerous if you are not an expert. Even if you are a seasoned EE, you might not know enough to be messing with high-energy stores that cannot be shut off.

There is an open standard - USB PD - 48V 240W. If that's not enough (e.g. boiling water for coffee) you can always chain a few in parallel.

You don't really want to restrict yourself to just changing batteries because chemistries improve (e.g. LiFePO4, NIBs) etc.

Some of the voltage differences aren't even real.

https://www.protoolreviews.com/20v-max-vs-18v-battery-power/

There are tons of rechargeable standardized batteries I have cr2032 coin batteries, the 18650 (iirc).

Regarding adapters, I have been replacing them with USB-C-to-barrel connectors and even got three devices off a single GAN charger. I have been trying to find the pitfalls of this but it’s awesome in theory!

There doesn't seem to be much of a network effect to propel any given proprietary 'standard' to prominence, and so the only solution to this will be state enforcement. The EU is doing a decent job here IMHO, eg with mandatory USB phone charging.

For home-use power tools there is https://www.powerforall-alliance.com/en/#technology

On Ryobi 40v if you stick a resistor between the tx and ground I think (look it up on youtube) you can charge with a standard 10s li-ion charger or cc/cv source.

Dyson vacuums have a 3D printable adapter to take power tool batteries, so there's that.

Not until the eurpean union steps in and forces some sense in the market.

I know this is going to be perceived as controversial but so far it’s the only way I’ve seen good things happen (eg: gdpr, digital markets act, usb-c everywhere - iPhones included)

The EU passed battery regulation last year. I’m not sure how well it will force interoperability; that may be a byproduct but it might not.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Is the digital markets act a good thing? I remember before that most video game stores, especially Steam, had regional pricing in the EU. Since the act it became forbidden, you can’t “price discriminate”, so everyone pays the same, Luxembourg users and Bulgarian users too.

> Since the act it became forbidden, you can’t “price discriminate”, so everyone pays the same, Luxembourg users and Bulgarian users too.

We can still get a ~ 30% discount since we don't have to pay, say, the apple tax anymore.

I bought my first 3D printed object, an adapter from one brand to another. (second and third where battery and tool holders for the wall, I thought that was cool there are practical mini-factories in peoples homes now)

It works well, I leave it in one tool (blower) we use a lot.

But I think theoretically mixing them might increase the chance of a fire or tool damage because the packs are different. Something something current cutoff, low voltage protection, no idea in practice if it's a real problem.

Battery tools are amazing and getting more Star Trek every year, try not to get the EU to slow them down too much.

Some brands put the protection in the battery (Milwaukee 20v does) others put it in the tool (EGO, Dewalt). If it's in the battery you're probably fine. If it's in the tool and you're using a differnt tool, a cheap hack would be to put a little voltage meter on it, and know what voltage you should not drop below. (I think it's 2.5v per cell on li-ion.)

edit: If you're talking about putting battery packs in series, (2x 20v packs for a 36/40 volt tool for example) an ideal diode might work: https://product.torexsemi.com/en/technical-support/techfaq/d...

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