AliExpress replacement battery - chances of dudness.

You can buy a passive adapter from those to Makita / Dewalt / Milwaukee

Never tried it so I can't speak for performance, but check the voltage. I think some vacs are 6 cell while tool batteries are 5 cell, so there could be a loss of performance.

Apparently some DC35 use a 'type A' battery and some a 'type B'. It appears the 'type B' might be compatible with the V6:

There are also plastic case + BMS kits where you can fit your own UK-sourced cells:

Theo

There are videos on Youtube showing how to dismantle a DC35 pack. You can then fit some new LiPo cells. They look like 6x 18650 cells. Maybe

You can also get physical battery adaptors that let you use Makita 18V batteries in your Dyson. Also on AliExpress.

Ah, many thanks (and Theo), hadn't thought of that. Think I'll try the recell. Bewildering choice of spec and price:

It's mostly a tradeoff between cost, capacity and rated discharge current. In a power tool the current is likely to be significant and voltage sag will limit the performance of the tool.

You could measure the current your existing tool takes, or look for a part number on the existing cells to identify the part number and look up the specs. But a rule of thumb is to calculate from the wattage.

I can't find the wattage for the DC38 (Dyson don't like people talking about electrical watts, only 'air watts') but I think the motor in the V6 takes about 400W max. 6 cells at 3.6v = 21.6v so we'd expect 400/21.6 = 18.5A peak current. I'd probably allow a little bit of leeway and go for at least

These 3000mAh 30A 18650s look like a good buy at the moment:

Theo

Right to repair?

If high currents are involved, you need good connections between cells.

My blood pressure meter, for example, takes alkali cells, but the current flow is significant enough, the contacts in the battery compartment just aren't good carrying a little bit of current, and the motor speed is all over the place. I can "perk it up" by taking the cover off the battery compartment and rotating the cells a bit to freshen the contacts.

When cells have spot-welded conductors on the ends, those represent a more robust connection. You still have to figure out how, or whether, you can package such things. Whether the design of the conductors is suited to how you will package them.

Example of an attempt at a spot welded connection (you still have to figure out what to do with the ends of something like this).

Paul

Indeed. It's well worth investing in a spot welder. You can make something from a car battery but there are cheap lithium gizmos:

Theo

The spot-welded strips solder reasonably, I have found.

So solder strip to strip, rather than strip-to-cell -- they cells don't like being cooked...

Thomas Prufer

I took the parcel to the post office today and the refund was processed by the time I got home.

Say what you like, but that level of customer service is hard to fault. Or indeed remember, if you are British.

I had thge same. Took the parcel in yesterday containing one of twow faulty components got a full refund of the total order.

I think the rationale is 'if the customer complains and can be bothered to go to the post office, then full refund' simply because priocessing a give back is so much easier than paying the customer a part.

They're trying to compete with Amazon which usually gives 'free returns' - either refunds the moment the parcel is dropped off, or a refund without any return for smaller items. It's all automated.

I suspect what then happens is the returns parcels are collected and then sold off by the pallet for pennies, where small time ebayers buy them and break them up into individual listings. With or without quality control...

That or they just chuck them in landfill. But that costs money, so better to sell on your waste to somebody else, especially if they can get consumers to pay you before landfilling it.

I think the seller must get some kind of subsidy by the Chinese government as an 'exporter', as I don't think the economics work otherwise. Maybe they collect the subsidy even if the item was returned, who knows?

Theo

Amazon has a thing (now) called Amazon Resale, where you can buy returned items. Maybe AliExpress can't do that, since their 'new' items are already so cheap it would be hard to undercut them.>

Aliexpress is different from Amazon in that they don't sell anything themselves. Amazon run their own warehouses and source/sell a lot of the products themselves - when those get returned some of them end up on Resale.

Aliexpress is just a website and a now a parcel operation. Their sellers going by names like Store110042345 don't have any UK presence, and Ali don't have any channels for selling returned parcels themselves - for one thing, they wouldn't want to stand by the quality of products that have been sold by random sellers of unknown quality.

Theo

That is a somewhat brutal statement. It is fairly clear that they do at leasts if not sell themselves, do a bit more than act as a sales portal.

am mnotr urse that the dont hold some stock in Europe/UK as well.

However they do have a UK return address for returned goods.

And rhe sellers I have bought from have definite names - chinese names. You know like "happy sun fun toy company" and so on

My advice is to bin it. These things are a fire hazard.

Back in September last year my daughter and her family were woken up at 3 in the morning by their smoke alarms. The robot hoover set fire to the sofa it was parked under. The room it was in was completely trashed and the rest of the house suffered smoke damage. They had a lucky escape. The house repairs are nowhere near complete and it's going to be 14 months since the fire before they can move back in.