CHANS Battery Rebuild

Rebuilding batteries and saving the environment, at a seemingly cost effective rate!

I wanted to make a little entry about a small business located a few hours away from me, they go by the name "CHANS Battery Rebuild". 

These folks are actually the ones who told me about the battery issue regarding the Libretto ff series and how the cells (at least new & genuine) are no longer possible to acquire. 
While I was disappointed (but entirely understanding!) that they couldn't rebuild the Libretto ff battery, I did know that they should have some sort of CHANS (see what I did there?) at rebuilding the battery for my NEC VersaPro NX, which contains 18650 cells. 
Wasting no time, I sent them my battery pack along with some info regarding the cells within the pack. From there I patiently waited. 

After about a week I received an email that had me a little bit confused. It basically said that while they were able to replace the cells (sweet!), they couldn't communicate with the BMS (Battery Management System) in the pack, and thus would be sending the battery pack back.
I had inquired a bit more but never heard back. I think I have come to an understanding as to what exactly this means. Basically the BMS needs to be updated to program the new capacity for the battery (more on that shortly), and I presume update info on the wear level of the cells. Without being able to do that, they cannot guarantee the performance of the battery and thus deem it a failed job. 

Well the fact that my VersaPro NX now sits next to my Libretto 60, entirely un-tethered to any outlet, is to me an epic success. 

What exactly does CHANS do? 

They rebuild batteries. Plain and simple right? Well not quite... They seem to specialize in stuff like e-bike batteries, power tool batteries, laptop batteries and more industrial seeming stuff. They seem to be able to deal with Ni-CD, Ni-Mh and Li-ion chemistries. Now when they have some idiot sending them a 20+ year old laptop battery I'm sure they probably slightly annoyed, but they gladly accept the task if you can provide details on the battery pack. For that I am very thankful. 
The complexity comes into play because there's many different types of battery cells out there, and batteries are a lot more than just three or so cylindrical tubes stuffed in some plastic. There's hardware paired with firmware inside of that to further complicate things (to ensure even wear of cells, prevent fires, etc).   

How much does it cost? 

There pricing outline is all on their site. I wont steal too much limelight from them regarding this stuff, but at least for laptop batteries they have a chart that works as such ...
10.8-11V
1800-2600mAh -> 29$ CDN & new capacity 2600mAh
4000-5200mAh -> 46$ CDN & new capacity 5200mAh
5400-7800mAh -> 64$ CND & new capacity 7800mAh

There's another pricing chart for 14.4-14.8V batteries, but since I mainly dabble with older laptops that have smaller capacity batteries and lower voltages, it doesn't really apply to the stuff I discuss here. 

Higher capacity batteries?

You got that right. I guess due to Li-ion chemistry advances over the years, we have been able to optimize cells such that we can create higher capacity ones that still follow old standards. 
However I believe that this relies on the BMS for full success. In the case of my VersaPro NX I will likely not see the full potential of these new cells as the BMS is still programmed to think the pack is 1600mAh capacity. Truth be told I have no idea what this does to the cells, but I noticed that laptop sat at 4% for a good 45 mins of idle on max power settings. Maybe this causes inaccurate battery readings? I don't know. 
One more thing. I don't know where CHANS gets their cells from, but I'm lead to believe that they use brand new genuine cells. Their cells are also all recently manufactured. Unlike those battery rebuilding outlets like BattDepot for example, who build packs and then shelve them for years, these cells all seem to be made within a year or less from my understanding. If you know anything about batteries you'll know that sitting on a shelf doing nothing but discharging = bad.

How do I send CHANS my battery?

It's best to contact them using their email provided on their site. Do as much research as you can on your battery pack (cells inside, voltage, capacity, current issue with battery pack i.e doesn't charge or only lasts 4 minutes, etc). In due time they will get back to you and tell you if they can or can not take on your rebuild. Due note that you will have to pay shipping both ways. This could be a deal breaker to some depending on their location.

My experience with CHANS & final verdict

As CHANS is close enough to me, and I have a Canada Post business account, sending batteries to them via Expedited Parcel is both cheap as hell, and fast (usually 1-2 days). 
They usually take a number of business days, 3-4 from my experience so far, to get started with your battery rebuild. They will keep you informed if need be, otherwise it's basically silence until it's time to send back your battery, regardless of the outcome. You can opt to have them simply safely recycle it, but in the case of my Libretto ff I had them send it back. 
From experience their turnaround time seems to be around 2 weeks from the day you ship the battery. This will of course depend on how long it takes to ship, but from the day they got the battery to the day I got it back in the mail, was a total of 9 business days. 
I found that while they are not hard to get ahold of, they can take a while to actually get back to you. I can't blame them too much as they're probably quite busy and don't have time to answer questions and such all day. But even still, I never heard back about whether or not my old cells had been put back in my VersaPro NX battery pack, they just sent it back to me. I still haven't heard any word on what I owe them for shipping and all!

Nevertheless the fact that my VersaPro NX no longer loses power the second you unplug it (or even if you mishandle it while its running, remember the barrel in the AC adapter is a bit wonky!) is awesome. This is a 20 or so year old battery pack and while they couldn't fully reprogram the BMS, they still managed to make it work good enough for what a 20 year old laptop is worth. Furthermore they did such a good job opening up the battery pack you could hardly tell it had been tampered with. As of right now I need to reach out to them to inquire if they will be charging me despite the BMS issue, but even still for 29$ + 19$ shipping that's a pretty decent deal. In most cases you can't even get rebuilt battery packs for such an old laptop, and if you can they're easily near 100$ CDN before shipping and made from old shelved cells. 

I would definitely recommend CHANS if you're in the Ontario province or near it. They seem to do good work and are very knowledgeable. Their turnaround time is decent too. It's a bit of a shame that they are difficult to keep in touch with, but I can look past that for the good pricing, decent cells & their willingness to work with just about any battery. 

Small update September 16th

 I got into contact with CHANS again and they explained the situation a bit more. Basically, because the BMS could not be rewritten, they opted to put in some used battery cells, instead, thus the inability to guarantee performance and the strange draining pattern of the battery. Because of this, they opted not to charge me for parts & labor. Once again, for a 20+ year old laptop this is plenty good enough if you ask me. Thanks again, CHANS :)