Reusing Components? Soldering Torture Test Shows Why You Can

While I prefer to use new parts, for many years I salvaged parts from PCB's without issue. Even today when I am developing something I recover parts as needed if they are not to hand. When you live in the most remote capital city in the world and freight is expensive and slow it makes sense to get something finished instead of waiting.

It occurred to me that I had never seen, or experienced, any reason why recycled components fail. So I thought up a torture test for a device with many transistors, a voltage regulator. After you see what transpired I think it will reassure you about using recycled or salvaged components. The parts survived well beyond what I expected, even shrugging off my efforts to make them fail.

It might not be good enough for NASA but as a hobbyist if it's good enough for me then it's good enough for you.

 

Li Ion Pulse Charging - Proof of Concept Test Part 2

I wrote in the earlier post that I had again "ruined" another cell by discharging it below 2V. Given the weak basis from the first cell showing signs of recovery after 10 charge/discharge cycles I put the second cell on the pulse charger and left it alone. A day later I downloaded and analysed the 14 cycles that had been logged. 

The first 11 cycles showed deteriorating cell capacity:

Note that the previous post referred to Battery F also. It was a typo and should have battery E.

But when I looked closely I noticed that Runs12-14 again showed an increase in cell capacity:

I make no claims to what this means. But it is curious that for two over-discharged cells, some restoration process occurred. Perhaps it would have occurred with a CC/CV charger also.

Of course I didn't expect this and now have the pulse charger testing a third cell. I will have to revisit what happens to these two cells at a later date. Two more pulse chargers are in the process of being put together.