Building new high capacity battery pack for Arizer Solo Vaporizer.

This tutorial concentrates on building new battery pack. There are plenty of instructions on the web explaining how to take the battery out of your Solo. It is assumed here that you have already done so and know what you're doing.

Disclaimer: This tutorial is not for beginners. You should be proficient in soldering and have basic understanding of electricity and electronics. I take no responsibility for any damage that you may cause to your unit.

Arizer Solo Vaporizer is powered by a 2S 7.4V Lithium Ion battery pack. The original capacity is 2200 mAh. In this tutorial, I'm using my favorite Panasonic NCR18650B 3400 mAh cells to upgrade the pack with some extra boost.

Tools needed:

Wire cutters
Wire strippers
Soldering iron
Hemostats, optional but very helpful
Heat gun or hair dryer, if you are using shrink wrap tubing
Multimeter to test voltage

Materials needed:

Solder
Shrink tubing, optional
Electrical tape
22AWG or 20AWG stranded wire, red, black and white (or any other color to separate from red or black)
18AWG or 16AWG stranded wire
2 x Panasonic NCR18650B Li-Ion battery cells, available from here (xpresstek.net)
1 x 7.4 Volt 2S Protection Circuit Board (PCB), also available from xpresstek.net
JST connector, I just reused one from the old battery

Total cost for batteries and PCB + shipping, which is free , < $23

Assembly time, ~1 hour

Step 1: PCB - 1

Original battery does not have a PCB, only a polyswitch. I opted for a PCB in a new pack just to be safe. The PCB I got is 3A max discharge, which should be more than enough for Solo.

The PCB is to be assembled according to the diagram above.

Start with soldering the connector wires to P+ and P- terminals on the PCB - black to P- and red to P+.

Step 2: PCB - 2

Solder the white wire (or whatever color you choose) to the BM terminal on the PCB, it doesn't matter what side of the PCB it goes on. This is going to be the common connection for the pack.

Step 3: PCB - 3

Solder Red wire to B+ terminal on the PCB and Black wire to B- terminal on the PCB. I highly recommend to keep the color scheme here as red for positive and black for negative, so it doesn't become confusing later.

Step 4: PCB - 4

Use smaller shrink wrap to insulate the terminals.

Use larger shrink wrap to cover entire PCB.

Shrink the tubing with a hair dryer or a heat gun.

Step 5: Cells

Use electrical tape to secure battery cells together. They should be positioned with the polarity opposite of each other.

Step 6: Battery Cells Connection

You will need to solder positive tab on one cell to the negative tab on the other cell together. You can solder them any way you want. The way I did it is by creating a jumper using 18AWG wire, then I used hemostats to keep the wire on the tab while soldering.

Step 7: Battery Cells Connection - 2

Trim excess nickel from the tabs. Solder the other end of the white wire from the PCB to one of the tabs. Wrap the connection with tape to insulate it.

Step 8: Battery Cells Connection - 3

Solder the other end of the red wire to the positive terminal of the battery pack (B+ connection). Solder the black wire to the negative terminal of the battery pack (B- connection).

Make sure that the positive and the negative wires and tabs do not touch each other.

Trim the excess nickel.

Step 9: Battery Cells Connection - 4

Wrap up this end of the battery with tape just like you did the other side.

Step 10: Mummification

Now you can mummify your battery pack with electrical tape. This is not really necessary if you have all contacts insulated. I did just in case. The resulting pack came out to be somewhat thicker than the original one. I had to leave out plastic battery cover so it would fit into my unit.

Install your new battery pack in your Solo and plug-in your charger. The battery cells had fairly low charge, it took about an hour for the Solo charger to bring them up to the first battery charge indicator light. Total charge time was about 4 hours.