Any damage can potentially be a serious safety issue but unfortunately there is no way for any of us to know what’s going on inside those cells. This is why is is critical, absolutely critical, to prevent any physical damage. We just can’t tell when something will be a problem or not.
Every little bit of physical abuse, along with the aging of the cells during use and when sitting, adds up and eventually the cell will start performing worse, self-discharging, or start leaking electrolyte, or something worse. The less we misuse or mishandle them the longer that will take.
Having gotten that out of the way…
I don’t know if those dings are an immediate concern. But if the cells are not self-discharging any faster, are not warm (even a tiny bit) when not being used, and aren’t puffing then you might be okay. Add some physical protection to those packs and keep an eye on them and their voltages (standard advice for any pouch cells).
Thanks for all your advice, I’m gonna keep them up in my fire bag for now, but the voltages have been stable for a few days, they’re not warm, and the dings are really small. Don’t wanna risk a fire though so Idk what to do with them.
Maybe get a case like @Fosterqc mentioned.
I’m not sure if its worth the risk to run them. Also they’ve got roughly 15 cycles on them, and I run them fairly lightly, never letting them get too warm.
These cannot be rated over 8A-10A and could be rated under 5A. There are no 18650’s with a capacity over 3000mAh that can have a true rating over 10A.
Any cell can be pulsed at far, far higher than its true continuous rating. But that increases risks, accelerates aging of the cell, and results in truly crappy performance that is often much worse than using a much lower capacity cell (with a higher current rating, i.e., less internal resistance and voltage sag).
You could rate the J2 cell at anywhere from 0.5A to 50A depending on the cycle life, performance, and degree of safety you want. This is why the datasheet continuous rating is critical, along with testing, as “pulse” and “max” ratings are useless. All they tell you is that the cell didn’t explode at that moment. It says nothing about performance, cycle life, or future safety.
More than 12A each cell?
They won’t explode (for a while) but the voltage sag will be huge and the aging of those cells (and the damage) will be fast. That’s about the equivalent of running P42A’s at 100A each.
Make sure your solder joints don’t compress agains other wires. Having them all in the same place makes it bulky there and more chalanging. I like to change them out to longer silicon ones so I don’t need to splice them.
Going to be challenging to protect that pack agains the elements between the o groups if the yello is the case
