Some Precautions To Take When Soldering CR2032 Batteries
Soldering is a very heat-intensive process. When the correct safety protocols aren’t followed, it can damage your CR2032 batteries. In some cases, it can cause them to explode. Please keep the following in mind when soldering lithium batteries to terminals and circuits:
Don’t Allow The Tip Of Your Soldering Iron To Touch The Surface Of The Battery
The tip of your soldering iron can get quite hot. In order to solder properly, you will need to heat your soldering iron to 350 degrees celsius. Unfortunately, the surface of most CR2032 batteries can only handle heat up to 125 degrees celsius. That’s why you need to be extremely careful to avoid touching the tip of your soldering iron to the surface of the battery.
Whenever you solder, hold a bead of the soldering metal on the tip of the soldering iron and only allow the bead of metal to touch the battery. Next, spread the bead of solder around while avoiding direct contact between the soldering iron’s tip and the battery’s surface. All of this should happen within a span of 5 seconds. If you go any longer, the surface of the battery will get too hot, and it will cause damage.
Don’t Use Reflow Soldering For Most Lithium Batteries
Reflow soldering can be a quick and efficient way to attach surface mount components to a circuit board, but you shouldn’t use it when you are working with most lithium batteries. The heat produced in the process is simply too much for lithium batteries to handle. When exposed to this much heat, most lithium batteries start leaking electrolytes, or in the worst case, explode.
Some lithium coin batteries are designed to handle the reflow soldering process. The ML-R and NBL-R batteries can be soldered with the reflow technique. The “R” in their names indicates this. Remember, lithium is a temperature sensitive material. It doesn’t take much heat to get it to melt into the separator layer in your battery, causing a short circuit, so please always be careful.
Directly soldering CR2032 batteries can not only be dangerous, but it is worse for the enviroment. Using a battery holder allows for batteries to be replaced in electronic devices, increasing the life span of the product, and thus reducing contribution to the e-waste stream. To learn more about how to use battery holders in product design, for the benefit of your customers as well as the environment, please feel free to visit batteryholders.org.