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Make this Battery!!
By iFred, Section Homebrewed Electricity Posted on Tue Jan 20th, 2004 at 11:51:35 PM MST
How to make a cheap battery!

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Here's a neat experiment. Take those old aluminum hard disk platters -yep the type that you have probably collected for years and didn't know what to do with it.. you got how many?
Find some cloth or paper towel, make it damp with some "Windex or Ammonia" and make it big enough so it covers all the metal.
Now find some other type of metal like, sheet metal, copper, stainless ect.. they all seem to work, just as long as they are dissimilar metals
Make a sandwich, put the cloth in the middle and put the disks together, wola!! A battery!
Set your voltmeter on DC and you will measure about .8 to 1 volts dc.
++Want more voltage, charge this battery with another, connect the battery with the correct polarity + and -.. charge for about a minute and then do a voltage reading again... What's your result?
P.S. I see no reason why a battery pile could not be made of this.. It's cheap to make this type of battery.
Hope to hear from you!! Share your results!!
Good Luck!

Make this Battery!! | 11 comments (9 topical, 2 editorial)

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#1)
by zmoz on Tue Jan 20th, 2004 at 11:59:50 PM MST
(User Info)

Hey that looks pretty cool...how much amperage can you get out of that thing?

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#2)
by charged on Wed Jan 21st, 2004 at 06:06:48 AM MST
(User Info)

iFred,
You don't need much amperage from the stack.

Wanna see something cool?

Make a stack of these things, then pulse it across an electrolytic capacitor and watch the charge build up.

Set one of the little triac-zener charge dumpers on the capacitor and pulse-charge some standard rechargable batteries with it.

It would be interesting to see how long the plates will give you a useful output before they corrode.

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#5)
by Parameter on Wed Jan 21st, 2004 at 04:53:46 PM MST
(User Info) http://pages.infinit.net/gebet

In the past, i riped open a BIG hard disk. THis one had a motor shaft about 2 inches... was heavy and the magnets in there were huge. Too bad I can't find any more of these.

The plates are about 6 inches or so. There were like 8 plates...
I'll surely give it a try.
That is such a cool trick.

Para

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#9)
by iFred (ifred2006@yahoo.com) on Thu Jan 22nd, 2004 at 10:04:52 PM MST
(User Info)

To be honest, any standard hard drive that is toast and burnt will work. Any computer repair store will probely give you one for free. Inside are usally 1-3 platters that are pure aluminium and a neo magnet. Not to mention the frame is also aluminium in most cases. There are some neat parts inside. In this case small is not too bad. give it a try.
Wishing you good luck!

>> all energy used to produce this comment or post came from solar and wind energy! It works!
[ Parent ]

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#6)
by wildbill hickup (wildbill_hickup at yahoo.com) on Thu Jan 22nd, 2004 at 04:43:21 AM MST
(User Info)

Fred,
Are all drive platters aluminum? I tried this as you said and only got about 200ma.
So I wraped the disk with aluminum foil, presto .9v. So as you might figure I started raiding the cleaning cabinet, refigerator, pantry. Lets see OJ, vinigar, Try something with sodium hydroxide (oven cleaner) mostly wax and lemon oil, but it'll do!! :) Wow 1.15v, tried 100 resistor load voltage drop to 1.138 not bad. Doesn't hold a recharge though. Well next stop grocery store to get some draino (real lye) and a bottle of amonia. No I'm not going to mix the two... Now you've done it :) You had to get me started !!! :)These work realy cool if you build them in a CD case, perfect size.

Wildbill

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#7)
by Jerry on Thu Jan 22nd, 2004 at 11:40:35 AM MST
(User Info) http://www.dplusv.com/Photo-03.html

Hi Guys
This all reminds me of a pickle juice battery I made when I was a kid.

I had a small transistor poket radio. Coudn't aford to buy batteries very often.

Mom made great picles and put them up in little jars. I love pickles and saved the juice after the picles were gone.

As I recal I used some old zinc roofing tin and copper sheet. Stuff I found aruond the farm. I think each cell made about a 1/2 volt. I sireiesed these cells till I got enough to run the little radio. Don't remember how long they lasted. I guess I just had to eat more pickles.

This was one funny smellin battery. JK TAS Jerry

Airheads Page

[ Parent ]

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#8)
by iFred (ifred2006@yahoo.com) on Thu Jan 22nd, 2004 at 09:59:10 PM MST
(User Info)

Hi Wildbill!

The ammonia works best. I get 2.4 volts dc no problem. I was lighting LED's with it full brightness. Also interesting is that using the ammonia seems to not harm the metal plates at all. I'm thinking of making a larger cell now.

As you seid, I did a load test and it maintains pretty good. Try some LED's.

Ohhh.. different chemicals!! just be carfull.

The Hard Drive plater I was testing with was just aluminium. I did'nt need tinfoil, and I used some common metal plate.

This is not a bad battery. It does recharge. Make sure of the polarity. I used a golf cart 24ah 12 volt battery for my tests.

Sounds like your having loads of fun!!
>> all energy used to produce this comment or post came from solar and wind energy! It works!
[ Parent ]

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#10)
by wildbill hickup (wildbill_hickup at yahoo.com) on Fri Jan 23rd, 2004 at 06:03:35 AM MST
(User Info)

My wife keeps calling me Dr. Franky, Hummm, I wonder who she's talking about? She keeps on saying she going to move my work bench out on the front porch. Tried one of those hydrogen converters last summer, it works, I know because it blew up, glad it was a small one. Lesson: Don't ever touch a match to the end of a torch connected directly to a hydrogen generator/converter unless you just want to hear a big bang and ruin a half a days work!!!! And to think I hated cemistry in highschool, well maybe it is better that way, I probably wouldn't have graduated (no school to graduate from). Back to the subject. I guess I'll have to get a stronger sollution of amonia, the only thing I had was windex and it smells more like lemon than ammonia. The cd case I used work great, if you wanted to you could stack them side by side and make a nice little rechargable battery. Here's anonther question (hypothetical idea) if you were to seal all but a small portion at the top of the case and fill the case with ammonia instead of just soaking the cloth would the battery have more of a charge capacity?

Oh well the more answers the more questions.
Hey I got a new one for OldF's list

Wildbill

[ Parent ]

Re: Make this Battery!! (none / 0) (#11)
by charged on Fri Jan 23rd, 2004 at 08:04:09 AM MST
(User Info)

Take a lesson from the battery manufacturers.

Use two strips of metal, one aluminum, the other steel. Make two slightly longer and wider strips of heavy-duty paper-towel material.

put your aluminum strip on one of the paper strips and then put the other paper strip on top of that. Lastly, put the other metal strip on top of that. Then roll the "sandwitch" up nice and tight. You might want to leave a little tab sticking off the opposite ends of the metal strips for outside connection.

Stick that little cake-roll inside a plastic film cannister and fill it with ammonia.

Now you have a simple power cell with serious amounts of active surface-area, which means more available current.

Enjoy!

[ Parent ]

Make this Battery!! | 11 comments (9 topical, 2 editorial)

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