Regenerating your dead Hasselblad H battery grips

[MaxKißler]

Hi Guys,

this might be useful to everyone on a budget with an H camera. Here's my attempt to replace the dead battery in one of the grips that came with my H2.
All you need is (not enough money for a new grip ) the battery housing, a battery cage that takes AA batteries and some Li-Ion batteries that have proper dimensions such as these:
4 x 3.7V 1200mAh 14500 AA R6 Mignon Lithium Li-ion Regenerierbar Batterie Akku | eBay

Battery cage: Batteriehalter kompakt, 2x Mignon AA mit Anschlusskabel | eBay - Increadible how cheap both things are...



I think these images are pretty self-explanatory. Open the housing. Remove the battery but make sure to cut one wire at a time to avoid short circuiting the battery. Even if it's dead, there might still be some charge left. Connect the battery cage properly and and add two 3,7V Li-Ion batteries. Reinsert everything into the housing and seal it with the black piece of plastic. Before doing all this I checked the polarity with a volt meter. The positive terminal is the one that is close to the charger attachment (just connect red with red and black with black.. ).

I'm sorry for the bad quality of the photos, I only had my cellphone at hand.





The new battery grip works flawlessly. Like the specs of the batteries above suggest, it doesn't last as long as the original grip but nevertheless I get about 500 exposures out of it. It charges with the original charger and is lighter than the original grip.
I suggest using this resurrected grip with an H1, H2 or H4X camera. It will also work with the H3D, H4D etc. but since these cameras have DBs without power supply the battery will be drained even faster. So I doubt it'll be worth the hassle.


Cheers,
Max

 

[jimrivers]

What would happen if you used UltraFire 26650 3.7V 7800mAh Rechargeable Li-ion Battery?
Jim

 

[jimrivers]

Well Ultrafire brand might not be the one to use but if you used a higher mAh rated battery would that give you better results. You can buy 4 of these for about $20. Somewhat less that the price of a new Hasselblad unit.

 

[citizin]

I was thinking about doing the same with two of my h l-ion batteries.

I found ( these batteries ) that are identical to the ones in the grip. A little bit more expensive than your method, but still about 1/10th the cost of a new grip in Canada.

 

[jerome_m]

When I read about about this, I realised I had a few old H batteries which were a bit weak. So I ordered the cells from the tme.eu site shown above, but it took them 2 months to deliver... To make the story short: I go the cells yesterday and exchanged the parts in the H grips... works very well.

It would make sense to reset the batteries after the exchange. To do that, take back, lens and viewfinder off; press menu and flash; put the grip in and switch the body on while still pressing menu and flash. You will hear a series of beeps when the controller in the grip is reset.

To glue the parts backs: polystyrene glue appears to work fine. Put some glue on the tongue and sides and fit the top part in. Put the little oval piece last after having put a bit of glue through the hole. Get a clamp to hold everything together till the glue has set.

 

[citizin]

Nice, I've been waiting for them to be in stock before I ordered some. I didn't want to wait months to get them in, thank you it looks like they have some in stock now.

 

[MaxKißler]

Excuse me, I don't visit this forum as frequently as I once did. However, I forgot to mention that it's important that you remove the golden bolt that tells the camera how much charge is left in the battery. If you replace the original cells the way I did, the camera won't know that the battery is actually fully charged and instead wants you to replace the grip with a fresh one.

You can see the bolt I'm referring to in this image on top of the bottom "spike", right side :

(Left side) Simply remove the four black screws that hold that black piece of plastic in place and you can remove the bolt:

 

[MaxKißler]

What would happen if you used UltraFire 26650 3.7V 7800mAh Rechargeable Li-ion Battery?
Jim

It won't work since the battery is way too huge to fit into the original grip. It's both too thick and too tall. The part number "26650" means it's a large cell, the 14500 is the largest that still fits (keep in mind you need at least two cells).

 

[MaxKißler]

I was thinking about doing the same with two of my h l-ion batteries.

I found ( these batteries ) that are identical to the ones in the grip. A little bit more expensive than your method, but still about 1/10th the cost of a new grip in Canada.

Great info, thanks! Looks like these batteries have the chip that is also on the original cells already included. After I realized that I won't have any battery status with my solution I searched fo the exact same cells that were in the original grip. Turns out that they're quite commonly used in laptop batteries. So I got these and ended up soldering everything together myself. That was no fun at all...

Next time I'll be buying these instead for sure.

 

[Mr.Gale]

Darn......I was going to buy a couple of the suggested batteries from TME but the only shipping option to the US is air freight and they can't ship batteries by air. Does anyone know of a US source? I Googled the Panasonic part number and didn't find a source other than TME.
Thanks,
Mr.Gale

 

[pochen86]

Excuse me, I don't visit this forum as frequently as I once did. However, I forgot to mention that it's important that you remove the golden bolt that tells the camera how much charge is left in the battery. If you replace the original cells the way I did, the camera won't know that the battery is actually fully charged and instead wants you to replace the grip with a fresh one.

You can see the bolt I'm referring to in this image on top of the bottom "spike", right side :

(Left side) Simply remove the four black screws that hold that black piece of plastic in place and you can remove the bolt:

I am trying to make this happen so far I remove the gold bolt but it still come out replace your battery.( with my H3D39II)
Anyone can advise? I am using aa3 size/3.7V/ 2400ma rechargeable batteries/ Yet, I notice you guys share "that" batteries 2s1P, but it does not ship to my area so I try the first idea which replace it with aa3 batteries. I will check the remote control li-ion one see if anythinig fit in.

 

[jerome_m]

I am using aa3 size/3.7V/ 2400ma rechargeable batteries/ Yet, I notice you guys share "that" batteries 2s1P, but it does not ship to my area so I try the first idea which replace it with aa3 batteries. I will check the remote control li-ion one see if anythinig fit in.

Even if you cannot find the battery pack with the two cells, you can probably find the individual cells: Panasonic 103450. Then, you will need to open the 2 cells pack in the grip and rebuild it with the new cells. It is more involved, but still considerably cheaper than buying a new grip. Then you keep the golden "bolt", of course.

Alternatively, you can ask someone from Europe to order a pack for you and mail it.

 

[pochen86]

I solved the problems. Not that difficult. Thank you. you may ask some Remote control or drone ppl they may help you with batteries revise as long as the size can fit in the case the problem will be solved

Thank you for all these people here. the li-ion inside the grip now is an old version and rarely found or difficult to shipping out of EU.

 

[Mr.Gale]

I solved the problems. Not that difficult. Thank you. you may ask some Remote control or drone ppl they may help you with batteries revise as long as the size can fit in the case the problem will be solved

Thank you for all these people here. the li-ion inside the grip now is an old version and rarely found or difficult to shipping out of EU.

So how did you solve the problem? Do you have a manufacture Part# for a replacement battery?
Mr.Gale

 

[craigosh]

Hobbyking have a huge range of lithium packs, european, US and Asian warehouses. I used to get my packs for RC Car racing from them and they where always great quality.

 

[citizin]

Hobbyking have a huge range of lithium packs, european, US and Asian warehouses. I used to get my packs for RC Car racing from them and they where always great quality.

Just looked into Hobby King, ordered a this pack to test.

Power specs are the same with a little bump in mAh. It's also a tad longer, but should still fit in the grip.

 

[pochen86]

So how did you solve the problem? Do you have a manufacture Part# for a replacement battery?
Mr.Gale

Make it easy. go to ask some drone forum ask: if there are batteries which 2s1p 7.4-8.4V then you may get a 800ma one that work. yes shorter life circle but still can keep your H batteries alive

 

[citizin]

Just looked into Hobby King, ordered a this pack to test.

Power specs are the same with a little bump in mAh. It's also a tad longer, but should still fit in the grip.

These didn't fit. They did come overnight from HK so it's kinda a bummer. Trying Ebay ones now. THe quoted total shipping time is ~1 month. :bugeyes::angry:

 

[Adam]

Can anyone suggest some good rechargeable battery CR123A for my Hasselblad H3dD grip?
I have noticed that there are a lot of them but they are 3,7V rather than 3V.
Is anyone using rechargeable 3,7v battery?
Do they work fine without damage the camera?
As far as I know I know the battery should be 3v.
PLEASE HELP!!!!

ADAMO.

 

[jerome_m]

Even if you cannot find the battery pack with the two cells, you can probably find the individual cells: Panasonic 103450. Then, you will need to open the 2 cells pack in the grip and rebuild it with the new cells. It is more involved, but still considerably cheaper than buying a new grip. Then you keep the golden "bolt", of course.

Alternatively, you can ask someone from Europe to order a pack for you and mail it.

Hint, hint...