9 Mar
2009
9 Mar
'09
12:17 p.m.
--- On Mon, 3/9/09, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
Well, at least there's still enough left of you
to
write the email.
Hehe. Yup. Thanks to the safety mask, I'm perfectly fine. Some crud got on my hands
and arms, but it wasn't hot, and I washed it off immediately. It was definitely an
'explosion' though, on par with a small firecracker.
I've soldered to NiCd cells using a phosphoric
acid
flux, but the
thought of doing the same to a little lithium coin cells
scares the
bejeezus out of me. Battery holders are good...
Yeah, I've soldered NiCd's on many occasions, and I've also been successful
soldering lithium coins every time until this one. Mainly when repairing Sun NVRAM
modules. Solder some bits of wire to a coin cell, and solder that to the nubs exposed by
chiseling away at the epoxy on the module. I always wore a face mask when soldering those
too. Better safe than sorry.
I would have used a battery holder, but in the case of a Nintendo cartridge, there's
too much possibilty of vibration, and the battery momentarily disconnecting.
The explosion was actually pretty interesting, firing the top of the cell clean off. At
least now I know what's inside a lithium battery. One of these going off would be an
interesting thing to see filmed with a high speed camera and slowed down. Hmm... images of
an experiment involving a lithium battery, a soldering iron, and little green plastic army
men come to mind... :)
-Ian