Handy Tool Drains 18650 Cells So You Don’t Have To

Draining a battery is easy. Just put a load across the terminals, maybe an incandescent bulb or a beefy power resistor, and wait. What’s quite a bit trickier is doing so safely. Put too large a load on, or leave it connected for longer than necessary, and you can end up doing damage to the cell. Not convinced he’d always remember to pull the battery out of his jury-rigged discharger at the opportune moment, [Jasper Sikken] decided to come up with a simple tool that could automatically handle the process with the cold and calculating precision of silicon.

At a glance we can see the major components you’d expect in a discharger: a fairly simple PCB, four ceramic power resistors, a holder for a single 18650 cell, and a rocker switch to connect it all together. But wait, what’s that a TP4056 charging module doing in there?

While its presence technically makes this device a battery charger, [Jasper] is actually using it for the onboard protection IC. With the charging module between the cell and the power resistors, it will cut the connection when the voltage drops to 2.4 V. Oh yeah, and it can charge the battery back up if you connect up a USB cable.

[Jasper] says his little tool works great, with the resistor array putting just enough load on the battery to pull it down quickly without getting so hot that they’re dangerous to have exposed. He estimates the BOM for this gadget runs around $2 USD, and is considering offering it as a kit on Tindie in the near future.

If you’re looking for something a bit more advanced, [Jasper] built a programmable load a few years back that can discharge batteries and test power supplies all while logging the data to your computer for later analysis.