How to revive a dead rechargeable battery with a barbeque clamp
Dec 1, 2017
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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Sometimes it a rechargeable AA or AAA battery dies and you can’t recharge it. However, it’s not always actually dead, and Iddo Genuth from Lensvid shows you a simple tip how to “bring it back to life.” All you need is another battery and a barbeque clamp.
If the charger doesn’t detect the battery, before you throw it away, try this revival trick. Take any full metal barbeque clamp. You probably already have it at home, but even if not, it costs a few bucks. Clean it thoroughly and make sure it’s dry.
Now, take another battery of the same type as the dead one. Put the negative parts one against the other and make sure they have a good contact. Now hold the positive ends with the clamp, and hold everything together for about 30 seconds. And that’s it, you should be able to charge your battery as usual and use it again.
Iddo warns this may not work with every battery and there’s no precise number of times you can do this before you need to throw the battery away. But he adds that he still didn’t have the case when this didn’t work.
To be honest, this is the first time I’ve heard of this trick, and I’m gonna have to try it. So far, I’ve only been relying on warming the battery up. Do you use this “clamp trick” with your batteries? Do you have any other tricks to share?
[How to Revive a Dead (AA/AAA) Battery via FStoppers]
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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6 responses to “How to revive a dead rechargeable battery with a barbeque clamp”
Works like a charm!
Been doing something similar for years. Two paperclips are all that are required. One paperclip, connects – on both batteries, the other connects +, on both batteries. 30 secs or less required.
im all eneloops
sometimes one wont be recognized by the black charger with displays that everyone surely has
i then put it in the panasonic slow charger and it wakes the battery up again
A cool idea. This is the same thing as a “slow” charger. It usually takes 1-2 days.
Reverse charging using a power supply used to be a good trick for reviving NiCd batteries but isn’t needed as much with NiMh batteries. If you treat your batteries with care, discharging them fully before recharging, and not overcharging them, there should be no need to have to resort to this method.
Over discharge of Li-Ion batteries causes the formation of copper dendrites that can dramatically increase self-discharge. (Each time you over-dicharge the batteries, shelf life of charge will decrease.)
Over discharge can also increase the chance of a fire during recharge, which is why many chargers won’t recharge a battery in that state.
That said, the probability of catastrophic failure during recharge seems low, but it’s not the kind of thing I’d want to leave running while I went out to dinner.