There are many applications where you have limits on how much you can cram into a particular space. There are also many applications where you need as much battery as you can get. At the intersection of those applications, you may soon be able to 3D print custom batteries to fit into oddly shaped spaces that might otherwise go to waste.
Commercial batteries are typically cylindrical or rectangular. In theory, you could build tooling to make batteries of any size or shape you want, but it’s an expensive process in small quantities. [Lawrence Ulrich] on Spectrum talks about a new process, developed by [Gabe Elias], that can print anodes, cathodes, separators, and casings for custom battery shapes with no costly tooling.
As an example, consider an unmanned aerial vehicle crammed with avionics. You could put off-the-shelf batteries in the wings, but you’ll end up wasting a lot of space. A custom battery could fill the wing’s interior completely. The post also mentions batteries shaped like the earpieces of a pair of smart glasses.
A prototype showed that in the space of 48 cylindrical cells, the new process could deliver a printed battery that uses 35% more of the available volume and a 50% boost in energy density.
Could you do this yourself? Maybe, but it won’t be trivial. The current process requires a liquid electrolyte and the ability to produce thin layers of exotic materials. What oddly-shaped battery would you like to see? Us? We’d like to have a battery for a laptop that was spread uniformly so there wasn’t a heavy side that has the battery.
Unless something fundamental changes I’m battery technology, I want to discourage people from making their own high power batteries. Go ahead, put some wires in a potato, or put some acidified paper between some coins. But please don’t go playing with lithium metal outside of appropriate conditions. Similarly it’s easy for 3d printers to not produce water or air tight objects. No 10 micron by 10 micron printing failure should lead to a fire, hazardous waste, etc.
I love the idea in general. Maybe there is a chemistry out there that makes this safer, but given the general understanding I have seen around batteries and safety, I think it’s best left to COTS or established manufacturing practices with appropriate fail-safes. The people in the article doing this have expertise in battery manufacturing that the average person doesn’t.
I’m looking forwards to the day i can 3D print my own Nuclear Fusion reactor.
The duality of man.
Respectfully, GFY. Safety should never take over self reliance. If people want to learn to make this stuff, then let them. The world doesn’t need your handholding.
Lithium polymer rechargable batteries are safer than lithium ion rechargable batteries
But significantly less power dense, both vs volume and weight.
Lithium Polymer chemistry is a bit less energy dense than Lithium Ion by both measures, but LiPo batteries are generally lighter weight than Lithium Ion since they can come in pouches rather than stainless steel containers… and in many practical applications they can take up less space, since rectangular pouches can be packed more densely than cylindrical steel cells.
Perhaps you’re thinking of Lithium Ferro-Phosphate? It is indeed significantly less power dense (but also safer, since it’s not prone to thermal runaway).
(also, to get ahead of any incoming pedants, I will note that lithium polymer batteries are a kind of lithium ion battery, just one that uses a solid/gel polymer in its electrolyte rather than liquid. But since liquid electrolyte batteries came first, that’s what everyone here means when they say “lithium ion”.)
Oh yes, I misread big time, something like po… safer. Apologies.
Going back, can’t liquid electrolyte cells be put in pouches as well? I though that’s what’s in most phones.
yes, you’re right, I was overly simplistic in what I wrote.
LiPo with a “dry” solid polymer electrolyte are rare, because they have poor conductivity at room temperature. The common “gel” type of lithium polymer battery uses some liquid electrolyte, but holds it in place within a polymer electrolyte matrix.
My understanding is that most of the batteries you find in phones and laptops are still gel-type LiPo batteries, not pure liquid electrolyte, but it is indeed possible to make pouched cells with liquid electrolyte.
(to make things more confusing, the material that keeps the liquid electrolyte in place is still usually a polymer… but this is also true in conventional cylindrical cells)
LFP makes the most sense for a DIY enthusiast to develop, leave the more advanced choices for better equipped outfits
This looks interesting for niche problems but I’m strongly against this happening in products. We are away enough from standardised components and repeirability already.
I’d like to rail against this because it took long enough to get standardized battery sizes. And of those (especially if you consider the coin-type), there are multitudes. I don’t want my kids to know that dad has this cool device he invented but for which they can NEVER get a battery to run it.
What if you have a battery printer in your garage and never have to buy a weird obscure battery format again?
Shouting “Battery, FIRE!” does not hold the same meaning like 50 years or more ago. Yet the same physical phenomenon once being satisfying, today is not. Unless you’re an arsonist.
What order should be screamed if a bunch of trbuchets are launching flaming Teslas? “Battery Fire battery fire!”?
It’s not the ability to create any custom “shape” battery that is the big advantage here, it’s the possibility of REPLACING custom shaped batteries easily that would be the REAL advantage.
Specifically, I’m thinking of CELLPHONES and the absurd amount of e-waste produced when a perfectly good phone is thrown away just because it becomes too costly/cumbersome to replace the custom battery inside it.
Lots of new EV cars are going down this disturbingly bad road now too. Imagine having to “total” a $100,000 EV just because the battery can’t be replaced.
That’s not a warning for the future. We currently DO that.
And likely still will no matter how available a replacement battery is, in the same way mild damage to a corner that could easily be repaired is so often written off as ‘totalled’ etc. It isn’t that the fix can’t be done, or is even that tricky and/or really really expensive to do. These days for most EV at least availability doesn’t seem too bad, it is simply that the choice is made to not to or not to allow such a vehicle back on the road even if its safer/better than it was out of the factory – The calculation going something along the lines of ‘conspicuous excessive consumption keeps us all in business, who cares what is best the person/planet/etc’.
As rather well evidenced by how many written off EV have been repaired and used in Ukrainian market (though with the power grid being so mangled by the war I’m not sure the Uranian user are all going to be that happy with them right now).