eBay "recall" ML2032 rechargeable 3V lithium cell and charger - with schematic
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- čas přidán 22. 08. 2024
- This was an expensive set of four rechargeable Maxell ML2032 cells and a charger for them, but I'm not convinced the charger is actually suitable for the cells. The Japanese seller also included a set of metal tweezers for removing the cell from the charger, suggesting they are not that technically inclined. (Yeah, I totally used the tweezers with a dead CR2032 cell as a clickbait thumbnail.)
I subsequently received a vague warning from eBay that the listing had been taken down and to stop using the product immediately, but unlike Temu they made absolutely no effort to explain the issue or refund the buyers, and it's not even possible to initiate a return even though it goes through all the motions!
I contacted the seller and they insisted the cells are genuine Maxell ML2032's and that the charger is suitable for them....
Ongoing tests show they do take a charge, but it doesn't appear to be compliant with a charging specification I found, which is a charge current of 2mA (very slow trickle charge) at a maximum of 3.1V - this charger puts out about 30 times that current at 4.2V!
The extremely low charge current is probably why the voltage shot straight up to 4.19V on the standard LTH7 style charge chip. If these are real then I may have to improvise a simple charger. Maybe a simple current limited supply and a TL431 as a programmed voltage cap?
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- www.bigclive.c...
This also keeps the channel independent of CZcams's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators
The tweezers are to get the flaming pieces of burning metal out your eye when one of the batteries explodes while charging. Never let it be said they aren't thoughtful. 🙄
see now I always loved chinese, just never could swollow a hole one though. Tweezers 😆
Thus they avoid liability. The tweezers were a tool and a warning that you will be hit with small shrapnel. YOU WERE WARNED! 😂
Ebay cares about your post explosive failure medical care!
Well i mean, if you keep the safety thing on you could use it to push the cell out instead of grabbing it.. shrug
I use a fork. Works great in a pinch!
A safety recall where you get neither a replacement or refund? That sucks.
That's fleabay for you.
Yeah. I've seen manufacturers try that in Australia... "Just throw it in the bin... then come and buy a new one"
It usually takes 2 to 3 business days before it's changed to say "ok, bring it back for a refund.... But you need your receipt!"
But you owe them your life. Surely that puts you in their debt?
I enjoyed the screenprinted label on the PCB: "I AM FULL!!"
In this case it should read "I AM PERMANENTLY DAMAGED!!"
They could just print "UH OH"... or "CAVEAT EMPTOR"...
@@tncorgi92That's what the dodgy Chinese "CE" marks really mean.
@@georgeprout42 Saving this
@@ts757arseI’ve gotta get one of AgentJayZ’s t-shirts with “I void warranties” printed simply in white on black.
Maybe eBay need to be reminded of their legal obligations when it comes to recalled and faulty goods.
I just got scammed for 2 extremely realistic looking Milwaukee tool batteries. They were about 15% less than locally so I thought they may be real. Obvious when they are 1/2 price they are fake. Anyway, many negative feedback entries for the seller saying the batteries are fake, yet eBay never stopped the seller.
All you need to do is follow the contact Us....and they will refund every time. They are good as gold like that
They are too busy sending pig masks and renting cars to stalk people to be reminded of that
@@Randomname183 they may not be 'fake' but old/used ones, did they look new? they may even have put old innards in new casings! theres a lot of supposedly 'fake' chips on ebay but it seems many are 'genuine' or of same type but lower grade/rating old cleaned up and even remarked 'pulls' from used/scrapped/surplus equipment
How do you recall, return, refund a hosting , or messaging service ? Because eBay sells nothing more than a hosting and messaging service !!!
Ebay is not Amazon.
Wow, I looked up the specs with Panasonic and Maxell for these Lithium Manganese Oxide battery series and they quote 1000 cycle life only at 10% depth of discharge!
At 20% depth of discharge it's only like 300 cycles. So if you go from 100% to 80% charge, that's 20% DoD (slightly simplified).
These things really are meant for last resort buffering of things that are usually mains powered or have some large primary battery pack by the looks of it. Like keeping an RTC alive, memory powered, etc.
Thanks. 👍🏻
I remember these from computer mainboards. Used to keep BIOS settings stored in memory even when the pc is unplugged for a while.
My Logitech solar keyboard uses one. I've had to replace it a couple times now.
the biggest use case i've seen for them are keyfobs that wirelessly recharge when in the ignition
they never really see less than 1% dod and usually last about 10 years
@@tronixfix
Those are non rechargeable cr2032. They last about 12 months if left unpowered, or basically forever if the power is kept on.
Something really horrible must have happened to provoke eBay into sending a warning e-mail. eBay usually has the attitude that it is between you and the seller. “If you happen to die, complain to the seller. Best wishes..”
Indeed. eBay are useless.
It's how they try and avoid liability because they are so bad at policing their own marketplace.
If you see the death-trap shait Clive has bought on ebay the last years, it is astounding they even take a effort to do this,
It is amazing that clive only had one such message with all the other terribly dangerous stuff he bought from ebay
(ah man YT censoring is really nagging me.. or I'm a bit of a pottiemouth.. )
I once got a charger and some 18650 cells from ebay. Many weeks later, Ebay told me to bin them.
That preview pic reminds me of when the store staff, at my workplace, thought it would be a good idea to put hundreds of unwrapped, fully charged, button cells together, in a big bag.
Needless to say, we lost hundreds of dollars worth of *overheated* inventory, on that day!
I made a 3D printed tube to store my CR2032 cells safely.
@@bigclivedotcom
Good thinking :) .
Much better than what I saw on that fateful day!
So proud that I can now recognize specific scars on Big Clive's benchtop. Ah, the stories it could tell!
Clive has a name for those, 'skids'.
Which is your favourite?
I’ve been curious about the
>-<
(oriented 90 degrees from my ascii art) ever since I first saw it. It would be fun to know the history of that.
That was there before the plastic welding video.
I only recognize the wavy one right in the middle, from the plastic welder video.
@@Lampe2020that's the one everyone remembers...
Funnily enough I got the same "We take Product Safety" message from EBay over some laptop batteries I'd bought to salvage the 18650's in them for some 21 cell power banks, It seemed strange that EBay failed to realise that the salvaging the cell was why they were being sold!
They are really cracking down on dodgy lithium cells now after the UK govt. got them to pull some dangerous E-bike fire starting battery packs earlier in the year.
Quiet Dear Human ! We Must NOOOOT talk about 18650 otherwise you might rise the price of cell from 0.25$ to 0.95$ a single cell ! HUshh hushhh we must keep secret the old salvage cell's hack ! 🤣🤣
🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃@@mohandamrouche7470
Okay, lets be real though, if ebay had a section that sold recalled items we would be there daily.
Wish I could still get one of those antique X-ray machines.
Accurate
That’s what I was thinking!
Clive: “I was duped!”
Me: “This wasn’t what you were there for?”
"Dimple" on your 2032 cells? Well, open them up! They are not 2032s :D
Would ne interesting a teardown of cell.... who knows what could be inside...
A 'spicy pillow' sandwich, I presume? 😅
Come on Clive we need a cell teardown 😊
I'm guessing it's a small button cell in the middle and the dimple is so that it contacts the metal parts of the outer case.
could it be a 2025 in disguise?
I've had some weird _"support"_ from Ebay before. I once bought a couple of sets of earpads for not that cheap from a Polish seller.
They went missing on shipping (I'd used the seller before for a DAC device so they themselves weren't scammers.)
I contacted Ebay and was told to wait to see if they would arrive. Anyway fast forward some time and they didn't and I tried to dispute further over the phone and they said wait longer but they had started a refund.
Eventually the case just closed itself, and when I tried to phone them they refused to even get involved as the case was closed and they can't reopen them, except they're the ones who told me to wait...
This happened to me with a set of headphones, theyre weren't too expensive so i just took the loss, but they eventually arrived 2 YEARS LATER! 😂
Years ago I worked for a major telecomms manufacturer. The kit included a memory powered by a button cell. Customers complained that the kit didn't keep the settings they had entered. I went to the factory and found that the storeman was carefully keeping the new button cells stored safely in conductive black foam . . . . . .
@@andrew_koala2974 No, rather it was almost superconduct ivity!😂
Did the customers get charged? 😅
Yeah, your clickbait-y thumbnail totally worked! I glanced at the thumbnail, and kinda instantly my mouse hand followed. "Wait, WHAT? Who in their right mind holds a button cell with a metal pair of twee... It's BigClive? Okay; go on, then. Tell me a story!"
Shameless clickbait posed carefully with a completely dead CR2032 cell.
@@bigclivedotcombetter than a helpful neighbor, who tried to hand me a CR2032 out of a bowl full of batteries and screws.
Grabbed my multimeter, not a damned cell in that bowl was any good. I explained to her why, she acknowledged what I said, then promptly dumped a box of industrial AAA cells into a bowl...
Some folks are a 5 watt lamp inside of a 100 watt room.
@@spvillanoIndustrial as in without the insulating wrapper?
@@BrendonGreenNZLindustrial supply cells, for commercial use. Still had the insulating wrapper, just marked industrial/commercial and sold in larger boxes than consumer packaged cells.
The way she stores them though, guaranteed to short out any cell she tosses in there. Amazing she hasn't gotten smoked out yet.
also triggered by the thumbnail. also knew bigclive knew exactly what he was doing XD
Technically the CR2032 cells have an internal resistance of at least 15 Ohms, so it would only dissipate about 600mW for the short duration that you are pulling them out. It is still kinda dumb though. Platic Tweezers would have been cheaper
Ha! "Short" duration...cute pun. Just couldn't resist...
@dr.robertnick9599
Man! They sure saw you coming.
CR 2032 are Not rechargeable.
Tweezers, when the battery is out of energy, ie. Needs charging. How much energy will be discharged across the all metal tweezers.?
I've shorted CR2032s out on purpose before as well. Bought some LED strip lights off Amazon and the button cells that came with the remote controls caused them to not work. Put a multimeter across them and the voltages were pretty high, so I shorted them for probably 5 to 10 seconds and all of a sudden they remotes would work with the slightly lower input voltage.
@@snakezdewiggle6084 Did you watch the video? Clive talks specifically about using the metal tweezers to remove the charged ML2032 rechargeable lithium battery from the charger - something that someone may do not realizing it's terrible idea.
I imagine the rechargeable lithium probably has lower internal resistance than the non-rechargeable CR2032, so that could make things even worse.
But sure, I guess you got 'em. Great job. I guess they didn't see you coming. 🙄
@reverse_engineered
Sorry man, its on me, I can't believe how badly I got it so wrong.
Thanks for Not burning me to waterline.
Clive if you used " PayPal" or a credit card to buy the defective equipment and you received a warning letter , that tells you the charger is defective you can put in a dispute with PayPal or your card issuer and they will get your money back for you. They may take a week or two but you will get either a partial or full refund.
I heard it's possible that going the dispute with card route is the last option because oftentimes retailers will ban you forever if you go that way. So eBay could blacklist people who do a charge back right? Even tho they might not deserve your business, I guess big clive wouldn't want to be banned if he wants to continue finding dubious and deadly products.
I have relied on PayPal so many times when sellers, both regular and on eBay, have gone bad. PayPal have always been fantastic. None of the sellers have blacklisted me asaik. I still buh/sell on eBay quite regularly.
@@zzoinksCorrect. I'm not sure if eBay would, but I know other small business owners who have been scammed by people charging back purchases while making up excuses for why. There isn't much they can do the first time, but you can bet the seller is blacklisted at that point.
@@thebrowns5337 that's pretty good! I wonder if eBay ends up taking the loss or if eBay somehow forced the seller to compensate them. Because I have feeling if eBay is losing money then they wouldn't like it.
@@reverse_engineered you mean the buyer, not seller, is blacklisted? If you are saying the business owner is harmed, I've heard something similar for gas stations where gas bought using a stolen card is a loss to the station, because the card company refuses payment to the gas station when the charge is fradulent. (The thief makes off with the gas because the station was never compensated)
Utter ring-pieces! 😂 I haven't heard that in ages! Quite right too!
That snake branded slap bang in the middle of the bench is doing my OCD no good at all. 🤔😵🇬🇧
🤣
I suspect the "Temu plastic welder with schematic" (czcams.com/video/W2XMNSov9wg/video.html) is the culpable, even if it is not shown in this video...
I asked about that........ Clive gave me a heart........
That curly plastic spring burn mark is now going to be with us for many years to come ;-)
It needs to be circled in red.
Metal tweezers to extract a cell - pure genius! Great video as always!
Like your new designer bench with the plastic staple pattern!
I love the burn mark from the plastic welder thing
I asked about that.......got a heart.
I had a similar experience with some 18650 batteries. I had the same recall notice.
I contacted eBay by phone and they gave me a full refund and said not to return the batteries as they could be unsafe and to dispose of them in a local battery recycling collection.
The "I AM FULL!!" light is kinda cute
Japanese Kawaii at its best. I'm just surprised it's not accompanied by a little bunny. ♥
I absolutely love it when Clive goes off on stuff like this, especially the sayings, since I'm from America hearing new ways of calling someone out is awesome 😂
"You utter ringpieces" is a good one.
(For any Americans who want a definition of ringpiece, try Urban Dictionary.)
@@ts757arse "Wankpuffin" is quite famous.
He lives in a land of wizards, dragons and electrical engineers...... they have their own sayings in three legged land.
@@ts757arse spunktrumpet is another favourite 😂
Clusterfuck and omnishambles are a couple of my favourite neologisms. ♥
Logitech used to sell (and still might--I haven't looked) a solar rechargeable PC keyboard that uses one of these ML2032 cells. If you open the holder and take the cell out, there's a warning label to the effect of not mixing these up with CR2032 cells. I kind of like the idea of energy-harvesting wireless input devices, I remember looking through sales literature of a company that was selling industrial controls that generated all the power they needed just from the user pushing the button.
Ah! Great to hear that someone has now thought of a way to make Paper Shufflers more productive! 🤔😉🙄
I've featured kinetik switches in some videos. Both the snap action magnetic one and a piezo one.
obviously the seller/manufacturer knows that most all use cases for cr2032 are slow drain devices that last for potentially years. by that point you're well outside of the returns window. (if the seller even allowed it)
Back when I was into 3D movies I would go through a pair of CR2032s fairly often, in the 3D active shutter glasses that came with my TV. I would have been super interested in a rechargable version.
One option is to call eBay, I’ve had success that way and had issues dealt with right away.
Great seeing the 1M+ sub number!! 😊🎉
Correct, but an unbelievably complicated, and all around the houses, way of getting there via the help link which is actually nothing to do with eBay!
I've also had issues with vendors, and ads suddenly disappearing - with eBay declaring no knowledge, or responsibility
PS I recently bought something similar from Amazon (but cased) cheap, as a warehouse return... completely useless, USB lead missing, and USB socket ripped off the board! Clearly no one compotent had checked it.
A great deal of wrangling, with some difficulties in getting hold of someone; one call handler, and two supervisor's later, and frequent mention that I was a professional tech. I was told to keep it, and go away 😂
Five minutes later, I'd hard wired a lead, it works, but I ended up buying another, better, charger anyway...
However, I did get four free rechargeable LIR 2032 battery cells out of it 🤣
@@iandeare1 I've bought many items as a warehouse deal, often I'm very happy but the a few times I've had a problem they just said it was not returnable and I can keep it with a full refund. Only took a few minutes via live chat.
@technoman9000: not on this occasion it didn’t! However, some recent changes in returns policy appear to have occurred; including the only return option now is to print a return label, and await a GPO courier collecting ... a bit much for a packet the size of a box of matches, at the time I didn't have access to a printer (and begrudge the cost) previously they sent a QR code, and I walked round the corner to my local sorting office, they printed, and even stuck the label on - tracking and everything... all I did was get a morning constitutional
Gotta love the "I AM FULL!!" on the charged LED.
"And all those exclamation marks, you notice? [..] A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head." - Terry Pratchett, Maskerade
I used to buy things at least once or twice a week from eBay. Strangely in the last 6 months I bought the sum total of 2 things that were books. If they're seeing declines in sales, I really, really wonder how that could be. It's a Scooby Do mystery. Same goes for Amazon.
I use eBay as a last resort. Shipping is a killer these days plus 12% taxes and brokerage charges for items from USA make eBay a lot less desirable to shop on.
Since December 2023, I have had three eBay sellers with good satisfaction ratings and many items sold just not send me what I purchased. I’ve had an eBay account for 23 years and never had that happen before. eBay refunded my money, but waiting to be sure you won’t receive the item, then reporting the issue, then having to wait another week to ask for a refund is painfully slow.
@@wtmayhew Yes, that has been my exact experience too. One in Florida and the other in Eastern Europe. One of them I'd bought from many times. When I asked what happened he kept making excuses that the thing would be shipped soon - perfect score too. The other guy in Eastern Europe even sent what appears to be a fake tracking number. After waiting just short of the 90 days I contacted eBay and got a refund on everything. I haven't really bothered since. The change in the site was like someone had flicked a light switch.
@@vincei4252 Thanks for the reply. It was definitely a step change. Policy must have changed such that there is now less accountability for dishonest sellers. Sellers used to be quite afraid of receiving poor feedback.
The good news is that, even if the charger doesn't stop properly at 3 V (which it might not, if it's meant for LIR cells instead of ML ones), ML cells are generally fine with being "overcharged".
I did find some references to overcharging of ML2032 cells. But nothing firm.
The thumbnail showed you holding the button cell with tweezers, I thought no way! Unless it was completely dead or the tweezers had insulation on the tips! Very interesting.
I have seen those dimpled button cells before, mostly when you get one of those doodads that get shipped with a little plastic pulltab that disconnects the negative from a spring loaded connector. When the battery fit is not perfect (read as: complete shite) those cells do stay in place a little better since the folded down metal bit needs to escape the escarpment first.
Any discerning supplier in the UK who recalls an item will always offer a refund for the return of the recalled item. I know only too well first hand how little help eBay gives. I had an item delivered, and the courier left it on top of a pile of building waste that the builders were disposing of. You can guess what happened to the small package. eBay tells you to contact the courier and the courier tells you to contact the supplier, you go around in circles and like Clive, if you use eBay = YOU'LL NEVER GET A REFUND.
Request a call back from ebay customer service. Speak to a human and you should get your refund if you were scammed or the seller broke the rules.
I recently got stung by a clever, _fake courier scam_ where the seller doesn't send the item but sends eBay a copy of the fake courier completed delivery from the fake website. I busted them and got my refund even though eBay closed the case in the seller's favour initially. They also took down the seller within an hour.
They have too - it's the law - Unles sthe distance selling regulations been repealed.
as an ebay seller, i can tell you right now, they NEVER find in favor of the seller, no matter what the problem is including flat out lies, the buyer is protected 100% and ebay forces the seller to refund, sometimes 100% refund+they make you pay to get your item back
I have managed to get a refund from eBay. I had used the deliver to a local shop service, chased up supplier they said it had been delivered to the shop, but I never got a message saying it was ready to be collected. Did get refunded ok. A few weeks later ordered something else using the same shop. When I collected this the shop had my previous order as well.
@@frogzyou can contact your credit card supplier to get the money back.
Thanks for the safety warning regarding eating batteries, I wondered why I had heartburn last night.
I like the new snake branding on the work surface. ♥😅
It needs an eye and tongue now!
eBay sending an email saying “We take product safety very seriously” made me actually laugh out loud.
I imagine a call to EBay where you casually mention the YT channel would bring results. I cannot see any excuse for EBay refusing a refund. Nice article.
Could you test the capacity?
Normal ML2032 may be around 65mAh.
If it is a non-rechargable battery, the capacity could be higher.
Such immediate amusement when I first saw the battery in the tweezer.
Maybe they misheard and thought they should be LIAR2032 cells.
I see an opportunity for reviving the explosion containing pie dish.
Reminds of when as a kid I tried to recharge a watch battery with the 12V psu from my hornby train set. It went past my face on its way to the ceiling very fast with a little cloud of smoke and wisp of white papery stuff, oh and a bang. A lesson that has always stayed with me.
The ML2032 is actually quite a useful battery. It can be used as a simple battery backup for a 2.5V-3.3V load (no charger necessary). You can connect the battery via a 680 Ohm or greater resistor to your 3v3 rail. As long as your circuit draws less than 200uA continuous and supports voltages down to 2.5V. This battery will provide over a week of backup power.
The 680 Ohm resistor limits the charge current of the battery to less than 2mA and allows enough current to flow back out to support your 200uA load with minimal voltage drop. This battery can just be left in the circuit to trickle charge for over a 1000 cycles with out much degradation in performance if the discharge is kept to
Would it be possible to configure one so that it backed up a system but triggered some manner of warning to the system to switch into some emergency mode? Thinking an ESP32 in deep sleep mode could last a lot longer than a week
@@padraigwastaken Absolutely you could. The ESP32 is pretty power hungry in active mode so I would probably chose a different micro-controller. Essentially, you would place a schottky diode between the power regulator and your 3v3 rail. Then tie a GPIO in input / pull-down mode to the line between the power regulator and the schottky diode. Most micro-controllers will tolerate VCC +.3V on a GPIO so this will work fine. When that GPIO interrupts that it has changed its state to low, you know you have lost main power. The battery is still connected to the 3v3 rail with a 680 ohm resistor, so you will still have backup power. With a large enough capacitor on the 3v3 rail you will have enough time to transition to an ultra-low power (ULP) mode until main power is restored.
I see the ML2032 used a lot in applications like powering a real-time clock or battery backed SRAM. In those applications, with current draw measured in nano amps, it would last years without external power.
You got betrayed on E-Bay? Isn't the entire channel about that? 🤭😂
The other bit is finding really interesting stuff on eBay.
Never forget Poundland and the related family trips.
Or crap from Temu… after their app has finished committing identity theft.
@@tactileslut What does poundland have to do with a family trip? 🤷♂️
Congratulations on a million subs. Here's to a million more.
When I discovered these 3v rechargeables, I found them quite interesting.
Hah, that light label, "I am full". Yeah, that's definitely a standard Li-Ion charger circuit misused for the wrong type of cell.
I'd be interested to see if these cells are truly rechargeables.
5:44 Out of curiosity I checked the usb spec... the thickness of that paddle is actually not directly specified at all. What's precisely specified is the gap between that paddle (at its thickest part, which is at the edges which are supposed to have a ridge) and the inside of the shell, but that's not super helpful when the shell is absent. To infer the thickness a shell-less board like this ought to have the best you can do is take the specified outside dimension of the shell (4.50 ± 0.10 mm) and subtract the thickness of the shell (0.315 ± 0.03 mm) and the aforementioned gap (1.95 ± 0.05 mm), which gives a thickness of 2.235 ± 0.18 mm at the edges. The contacts may be recessed up to 0.26mm below that, giving an overall thickness of 2.105 ± 0.31 mm at the contacts.
That hot mess can't be genuine Maxell. No way.
Very interesting and thanks as always.
"What crap, all is lost, loose them all, liquidate, e-bay?" *_"Banzai!"_*
Only just starting with electronic projects, been 3D printing for a while; absolutely adore your videos.
"We take product safety very seriously..." Yeah the X-X sound you made I agree with. There are some sellers that sell generator backfeed or "suicide" cords meant to be one, plugged into your generator with one male end, a NEMA L14-30 and the other male end (you can see where this is going) into a NEMA 14-30 receptacle, typically used in North America for electric dryers. This plug set is used to carry 120/240 V at 30 A in Canada and the US. There are a couple of reasons why these things are dangerous and quite illegal: One, two male ends are dangerous to the end-user and the fact that you are back feeding your panel without any kind of transfer switch or interlock is also quite dangerous, especially to any high-voltage electricians/linemen working on distribution they believe to be off.
There is a reason the linemen in my area are required to treat every line like it's hot. Even when it's very clearly not.
@@tankerkiller125 Also it's common practice to ground high voltage lines before working on them so if something unexpected happens they can't become live.
What do you think a small Genny will do when loaded with a street full of houses? It will just go out on overload and become a non event. Linesman ground all phases before touching anything. Your little genny will be like trying to jump start a car with a AA cell...
Lineworkers have been killed by backfeed from generators. Including via the pole transformers in reverse energising "isolated" lines at high voltage.
@@v8snail There's nothing to say that genny will back feed anything ASIDE from the first pole pig. A rare circumstance, sure, but not impossible, and as the man himself has replied, there are many documented cases of this happening.
Just because you live in the city, surrounded by people like yourself, doesn't mean rules written by those who know much more than you can or should be ignored or dismissed.
Those rules are in fact written to protect people like you from themselves and are usually born from the blood of others.
From memory, when I've seen the rechargeable 2032 cells used on motherboards or the like for RTC backup, they've just used a 3V regulator and a trickle charge resistor (or resistor from the 3.3V rail).
That said, I checked a few datasheets and the LIR2032 is rated at 3.6V nominal, so it does appear to be a regular Li-ion cell of some kind, possibly NMC. Whereas the ML2032 datasheet says 3.0V nominal, which I'm not sure what chemistry that would be. I feel like there should be a charge controller chip for this kind of cell, since they've been around for a while. But short of trawling through the component suppliers listings, it might just be easier to whip up something yourself.
I don't know the deal with ML cells, but with CR2032 you can short them out without a danger, because they have very high internal resistance. You can just put a LED taped to the cell and it will run fine without burning up, but I'm sure you already know this :D So, any shorting with tweezers for a second won't do anything, nor will it even noticeably discharge the cell
Tweezers, or current shunt 😅
It's for testing if the cell is charged. Hold it for 30 seconds and see if it warms up. 😁
Gotta love the hieroglyph snake now burnt into the bench...
Clive you give us do much detail it's so interesting to watch
Just seeing the tweezers in the thumbnail made me clench somewhat!
Nice take down though...
"Lesson learned. Not really because I keep doing it."
clive commentary was a riot
Hi Clive,
Former ebay customer service rep here. It sounds like you made the rookie mistake of not selecting a return reason above where you typed the return message. This is the only reason the return button wouldn't work.
There wasn't a return reason menu. Just a statement saying the seller did not accept returns.
@@bigclivedotcom Were you trying to open it more than 30 days after item delivery? If not the only other reason I could think of is the seller misleadingly listing this in one of the very few categories that don't have eBay protections.
I need to stop thinking about this crap off the clock...
Oh wow, I needed some of those exact ML2032s to replace the clock battery in my Dreamcast since they used a rechargeable coin cell with solder tabs originally. Think the Sega CD used em too, but not the Saturn oddly enough.
You should be able to order rechargeable lithium cells with solder tabs or pigtails. I purchased them for laptops before.
@@reverse_engineered yeah I specifically didn't wanna go with those, I soldered in a vertical coin cell holder instead
Remove the charge current limiting resistor next to the battery and replace it with a shottkey diode to block the console from charging the battery. The voltage drop is low and a standard coincell works fine for a long time
Hello, I live in the US and I feel that I purchased the same Maxell batteries with the dimple in the middle from Alibaba.
The batteries work fine. They do loose charge rather quickly due to the 65 mAh capacity in comparison to Energizer’s CR2032 235 mAh.
I calculate that I would need to recharge them every 4 months for my AirTags.
Unfortunately, chargers for ML2032 are virtually non-existent and the multiple chargers I purchased output 4.2V, even if they are labeled for LIR2032 and
ML2032. I measured by using a multimeter pen on the multiple chargers.
The Maxell batteries came fully charged at 3.0V, and if you put them to charge they immediately jump to 4.2V. This made sense to me because the battery was already full. I don’t suspect that my batteries are non-rechargeable. That would be terrible as it would make them much more likely to explode.
I did use the batteries for several weeks in my key fob, they discharged down to 2.2V, they did re-charge normally. To recharge them I had to measure the voltage every few minutes until I got it up to 3.3V max.
As to the chargers…
One model charger is labeled 4.2V and that is exactly what I measured.
One charger I purchased was labeled at 3.6V on the seller description. On the device, it says 2.8V to 8.6V but it still output 4.2V.
Fully charged with any of the chargers, the batteries topped off at 4.2V.
I also purchased a different brand of rechargeable ML2032 batteries and they behaved the same way. Can’t tell you the brand because it’s written in Chinese.
I think that the issue is just the chargers in this case.
Here is a link to an open source charger that I found. This one should work perfectly.
Unfortunately it’s a DIY.
www.beyondlogic.org/ml2032-coin-cell-charger/
I’m also wondering if I can simply use a USB charger rated at 3V and attach a 2032 cradle to it.
Will be trying this in the coming weeks.
Clive, you should try discharging a cell and then charge it to see if it does take a charge? (In the appropriate explosion containment cake tin)
They do seem to take a charge, but really need the correct charger.
You can charge the non chargeable cells, and they do sort of take a charge, just they are not exactly going to give many charge cycles before they do something "interesting" and sort of self dissemble themselves, leaking that characteristic sweet chemical smell.
In the 80s my neighbor had a charger for alkaline batteries that had slots for coin cells. You could get 4 or 5 charges before they would pop.
@@chad2787You can charge regular zinc carbon and some silver button cells with a good number of cycles, using a charge current with a lot of ripple on it. Got a year out of D cells in a radio by integrating the charger in it, as then you plugged it into mains overnight when battery was low, not flat. Portable use during day, plugged in overnight
ML2032 cells are used often in the Logitech solar keyboards - I've replaced the battery in mine. They do not hold a lot of power - around 20mAH or so. Their lifetime capacity is between 50mAH (if you drain them completely then charge them up) to 110mAH (if you lightly discharge them and then charge them). Of course, they are probably gently charged at probably 1-5mA tops - 10mA is probably way too large a current for them given the chemistry ("ML" vs. "CR" vs. "LIH" refers to the chemistry of the cell). Of course, given the solar keyboards use amorphous solar cells, they probably are charged very gently. Of course, it appears only Maxell makes them, as the replacements I've found are all Maxell branded and they appear to be genuine. Then again, the keyboard itself draws so little power even a CR2032 would likely power it for a couple of years. The only indication they are approaching end of life is that their capacity goes down and it doesn't seem to take on a charge, and even then it can be months before they keyboard goes from 99% to around 10% where it can fail to power up.
I'm glad eBay take safety seriously!
I always want you to channel your inner Esther Rantzen and go eBay and Amazon etc for letting this happen. I'd love to watch a Big Clive takes on the bay series
I just replaced a pair of CR2032 cells in my battery sucking diet-food scale with an 18650. I only charged it to 3.7V though(may put in a schottky diode & tp4056, aka BigClive's next video, so don't have to monitor charging). Will get significantly more life out of an 18650 than button cells. Replaced them dam cells at least every year. Scale is 7 years old already, has 10lb limit and amazingly is accurate to half a gram with my 200 gram calibration weight. The 18650 works great, and will never have to buy them expensive little boogers ever again. Also, have a stash of smaller vape cells (thanks Big Guy!) that I have been using to replace other disposable battery applications.
> I subsequently received a vague warning from eBay that the listing had been taken down and to stop using the product immediately, but unlike Temu they made absolutely no effort to explain the issue or refund the buyers, and it's not even possible to initiate a return even though it goes through all the motions!
when even temu of all marketplaces do a better job at recalls you know we're living in the worst timeline
Someone donated a Quick cooker to our charity. I googled it, the web site said to cut the cord off and throw the cooker away, as it was an electrocution hazard. The manufacturer had no money to offer refunds.
The black charger has the type of battery socket I mentioned when you showed us the other charger, if the battery can be fitted upside down it will short the charger.🙃
In that instance the standard charge chips will revert to trickle mode, so less risk of damage.
Presumably the metal tweezers are supplied so that they can blame you for using metal tweezers.
When ebay refused to help with the money return, it was sometimes working for me to complain at Paypal and open a conflict overthere. Worked out a few times. This is why I still use Paypal at ebay, even after ebay and Paypal divorced some time ago.
I agree I got a refund of over £400 from an ebay item via Paypal when ebay wouldn't help. The item was listed on the UPS tracking as 'parcel lost'. The scamming pricks at UPS wouldn't refund the import charges though. Every time UPS is involved there is some sort of problem.
Great advice....cheers.
Love the desk of many projects that shows the scars of hundreds of teardowns. I assume the squiggly one in the middle is from the plastic welder tool you tested a few weeks ago.
Love the burn mark from your plastic welder :)
My guess is that there have been more than one fire or explosion. It could be that the battery is actually not the issue, there is nothing with that specific design to prevent charging backwards, the cell may be fitted either way up. The black charger prevents that by making contact only on the edge. I think you should grab the pie dish and stick the cell in backwards lets find out.....
Off topic but I like the plastic staple burn mark on Clives desk.
I'm adding "absolute ringpiece" to my vocabulary now.
Lol, the plastic welder squiggle burn 😂.
I was told that you should use gloves or tissue to put in new button batteries. The reason given was that leaving a fingerprint across the contacts would allow a tiny current flowing. Very tiny, but the cells are so small it noticeably reduces their lifespan.
That seems extremely unlikely. Fingerprints are largely oils mixed with dust - not things that conduct well at all. They are also minuscule in size, making the resistance extremely high to the point that they wouldn't draw a meaningful amount of current. And fingerprints aren't generally all that connected.
I'd say it's worth trying an experiment using a similar sort of metal enclosure and getting a really good finger print on it, then test the resistance across it. Be sure to let it air out first, since there will also be moisture (water) left behind, but that will quickly evaporate. I would be very surprised if you could measure any kind of continuity at all.
A decent DVM should be able to measure upwards of 100 megaohm. With a resistance of 100Mohm, it would take 913 years to discharge a CR2032 with a capacity of 240mAh. So there's going to have to be a resistance less than about 1Mohm for it to have a meaningful effect on the life of that cell.
A similar DVM will have trouble measuring any conduction on the surface of your skin without tightly pinching the probes with sweaty fingers. A fingerprint will have orders of magnitude less conductance than that.
@@reverse_engineered Thanks for that reply. I had some doubts, but I didn't have any information on the numbers involved.
From Thailand, the land of counterfeits, I've found the best way to identify a fake battery is with a gram scale so long as you have at least one known to be genuine. The mail-order houses here sell fake Branded Panasonic AA and AAA batteries constantly. Of course, the counterfeits are usually lighter and the genuine quality ones all weigh almost exactly the same.
Considering the stupendous amount of current this charger uses I really wouldn't rule out that they are real ML2032 cells.
For my own ML2032 batteries I ended up designing my own charger out of some op-amps, and transistors and a voltage regulator
8:22 - nice vid. So the 'CHG' node is low voltage during charging, so that the CHG LED lights up. And when fully charged, the 'CHG' node goes high, so that the CHG LED stops lighting up, and the 'FOOL' LED then lights up.
The swirl marks on the surface of those batteries looks like the original text was buffed off with polishing compound so they could print the rechargeable part number on them.
They used PCB traces so thin that it's basically a fuse in case the battery overloads.
Hi Clive.
Is there a way of testing if they are or not rechargeable?
Is a non rechargeable cell lithium?
If not...
Then taking apart the battery would it burst into flames?
Discharge them to 2.5V and then try and recharge them to 3.3V carefully with a bench supply.
😁 - I have only associated “MAXELL” as a brand of compact cassette and I have recorded on their cassette’s. As for that “safety-recall” thing from eBay; all the “polished turds” you can directly import from eBay/Temu/AliBaba,express should have had such a warning as they consist of Chineseum crap
Congratulations on the 1M!
That thumbnail got me.
Would have been nice if you showed the voltage of the ML2032 when not on the charger. They seem genuine based on what I saw in the video. I have many ML2032's as they are used in the 4 x K750 Logitech Solar Wireless Keyboards I own. The keyboard charges them just fine, but if you put more than 10-20 mA in them on a bench supply the voltage will rise to whatever level you set. They cannot absorb more than about 20 mA - their capacity is only about 60 mAh compared to a 210 mAh Panasonic CR2023. They should not be charged at 20 mA anyway, less than 10 mA is probably standard.
I have some EEMB 2032 rechargeables and charger from Amazon and have been very happy with them. Have had them for about 8 months and multiple charges.
I seem to remember that if you cannot resolve a problem, you can use 'the eBay contact us' link and request a callback.
The tweezers are, of course, for building a PC, as the Verge had us believe at one point.
The Banzai war cry caught me off guard 🤣
Sorry to hear about the frustrating experience, but thank you for turning it into a learning opportunity for the rest of us. You’re absolutely right about getting your batteries from a reputable supplier. I have had very poor turnout with the “too good to be true” pricing on rechargeable cells. Can you recommend any reliable sources for US buyers of 18650 or similar lithium cells?
Your local vape shop may have decent cells.
"you utter ringpieces" gave me a good laugh
Hmm... so should I buy one rechargeable 3V lithium cell, or 20 non-rechargeable ones at the same price... Kind of a no-brainer.
Excellent review, thank you. I have checked the capacity of the rechargeable ML2032 cells. It looks like it is only 65 mAh, which is approximately 1/10 of the ordinary non-rechareable CR2032 cells. Is it worth the fuss recharging them?
1/10 would mean 650mah...
@@neiliewheeliebin Yes, you are right. The average capacity of the CR2032 cell is 220-240 mAh, so the ratio is about 1/3 - 1/4.
As a replacement for a CR2032 in a standard computer or watch - probably not. But there are applications where similarly sized rechargeable sells are used as battery backup for NVRAMs or RTCs, such as in some RAID controllers.
8:10 "I am FOOL" - ROLF - You made my day mate ! 🤣
I have some of these I got a while back, it seems like the real shady ones are the upstream suppliers of the chargers?
At least mine looked nothing like the specialist charging boards some people were selling, it was that standard 2 slot thing - which at least stated '4.2V Output'.
I tested the ML cell, and by comparing it to some old-ish ML-1220 cells I had from laptops, I can confirm these are performing as they should for an "as-new" ML-2032; at least according to comparing series-resistance and short-circuit currents! I will continue to test these, as mine are identical right down to the indent on the bottom. The datasheet for the ML-series mentions expansion of cell contents during discharge, I wonder if this dent is to compensate for that?
But these are probably reject cells, one of mine has a tiny bulge on the printed side - some small defect in the stamped case. I am sure it's rechargeable, as the case is too shiny to be from a low-quality manufacturer, and all of the CR-types I've seen have a pattern of some sort stamped into the negative terminal...
The worst part for measuring these is the ~250 micro-ampere charge current, which was most *definitely* exceeded in that final shot there, give those two cells a red mark; as they are most likely to self-discharge... Try the other two cells in a 3.2v constant voltage circuit and a 2.2K resistor in series with the cell. Wait 72 hours for a full absorption charge...