Electrically conductive glue

You can get button cells that have PCB mounting pins on them. Although you may not be able to mount these on the motherboard they at least allow you t o solder your plug leads onto them without much risk of heating up the butt on cell a bit of heat shrink to finish.

Richard

What dangers?

I have successfully soldered batteries of all types.

Years ago I would have used something like DAG, but I can't find any details of it constituents[1]. It was a silver loaded paint.

There are some surface mount variety where the OP can solder directly onto the holder and not have any weak pins that can break or pierce a protective covering.

This was my top google hit

DAG is derived from Deflocculated Acheson Graphite, a trademark of Acheson for their colloidal products (the graphite ones were initially produced by striking an arc between graphite electrodes under water, IIRC). Silver DAG was widely used in research labs, also for repairing the old-style electrically heated rear windscreens where the wire was sintered into the surface and often failed through corrosion or mechanical damage.

Many thanks, it could well be my temporary loss of googling ability but now "dag silver paint" gets hits. I could blame google of course! :-)

I associated it with silver rather than graphite. It had a zinc coating like appearance.

Spot weld some solder tags to the battery

(approx 50% of the way through is the description of the battery/switch/ solenoid set-up)

There are other youtube videos showing alternative DIY methods.

easier to just let them press onto the cell. That's how battery holders work.

NT

In my experience electrically conductive is relative, ie they do conduct but not terrible well. We used to use silver loaded paint to repair keyboard membranes but sometimes it failed to actually conduct enough to the bare strips of print on the flexible keyboards. Brian

In my younger days, I would have tried soldering lithium cells, but I am now not confident enough to be quick enough with a very hot iron. Soldering the wires together to put the old plug on a new replacement battery with the wrong plug is very stressful.

For some reason, under stress I now find it hard to keep a steady hand.

The danger is said to be explosion.

I hasve slodered lithium fine - issue is mainly the dreadfully toxic aluminium flux.

Nicads are harder - need a BIG iron with lots of mass.

That seems to be the standard laptop button cell replacement method, but, having seen the number of anti-shake precautions in the ancient Acer 242 I've just done (glue and mounting plastics galore), I'm not convinced that just wires poking from the end of the insulation would be reliable enough.

Battery holder have special springy metal areas, not a bit of copper wire, plus perhaps tiny plate, held in contact by the heatshrink.

There is a silver 'paint' you get to repair heated rear screens on cars. Had some success with that. Never thought to try it in place of solder, though. Never seen the need.

Having looked at the website, I associate it with price! Ooh and it uses colloidal graphite, which I've used to stiffen up epoxy in the past.

OT: I've used silver paint as an RF screen on Technics SP15 turntables that used to go backwards when one turned a nearby transmitter on. It worked for that.

In message , Tricky Dicky writes

This is a possibility, although the cells are much more expensive than those on the Poundland cards. Also, CR2016 seem to be rare in that form. I assume they often use those in the Lenovo's for space reasons.

In message , alan_m writes

Again, if I were younger.......

I can see that that would be a useful device to assemble for all sorts of battery replacement duties.

I'm beginning to think that I should invest a few pounds in some glue and then report back.

CPC sell the PCB type @£1.74 ea. whilst not Poundland prices at least you could produce a reliable soldered joint compared to a dubious conductiv e paint joint.

Richard

why not invest a few pounds in a box full of tagged cells instead?