(2) Panasonic CGR18650CH 18650 2250mAh Batteries began smoking in Nitecore Intellicharger I2, not sure why

[Konstantine]

Hahaha!
Dude 0.7C is the recommended rate for this battery as the manufacturer says.
You are right it will deliver only 500mA, but what if his charger was working at his peaks? All the time? It would take too long to charge for sure, it then depends on how the charger can deal with it. In this case it didn't.

 

[ericska]

Just the charger was hot. When i wrote Orbtronic they said the batts should be fine. Can't figure out why the charger started smoking. They haven't shipped the replacement yet so i'm stuck with dead batts. Didn't know if anyone else had tried this combo.

Jeez, this thread really scared me... I do have completely same combo as yours. I'd ordered 4 pieces of Panasonic CGR18650CH 2250mAh batteries from eBay(Shanghai) and arrived couple days ago. I also have a 2 months old Nitecore Intellicharger i2 charger, and I ALSO using Vamo APV... what a coincidence... (But you're not using AGA-T+ atomizer... lol!)
I'd spent all day charged 4 of my CGR18650CH yesterday. While charging, charger and batteries did warm up but not hot. When the charger indicator light stop blinking, the batteries and charger were cool. Used my old digital multimeter measured the voltage, all of them was 4.13 volts. Everything went smooth and fine. Just put in the first piece in my Vamo and vaped 3 hours then I saw this thread...
Btw, why there's a "(2)" in front of the title?

 

[Konstantine]

Hmmmm
Turn your charger up side down and take a close up picture.. QUICK!

 

[ericska]

Hmmmm
Turn your charger up side down and take a close up picture.. QUICK!

You wanna see the back of the charger?

 

[Konstantine]

Yes, It has a label doesn't it? It' OK we know the specs.
Can you check the charger if he get's hot while charging?
Try to use an empty panasonic.

 

[ericska]

Yes, It has a label doesn't it?

 

[Rader2146]

Hahaha!
Dude 0.7C is the recommended rate for this battery as the manufacturer says.
You are right it will deliver only 500mA, but what if his charger was working at his peaks? All the time? It would take too long to charge for sure, it then depends on how the charger can deal with it. In this case it didn't.

What are you getting at? You're running around in circles here. My argument was never how or why the charger died. It was that your conclusion of why the charger died was completely wrong.

Simply because the battery requested a lot of current. Your charger was fryed because of that.

Again, batteries dont request current, they just accept what is given to them. The fact that you successfully charged your batteries on your analyzer with a 1.57A charge current proves absolutely nothing. It did what it was programed to do. The NiteCore charger is programmed to deliver a maximum 500mA. That is all that a properly working charger will deliver. If it delivered more current than 500mA and fried itself from over-current, then that is the fault of the charger and had nothing to do with the battery. Reality is that there is no way of knowing why it fried, but we can be absolutely certain that a battery requesting too much current is NOT the cause of failure.

 

[BurntHit]

I read through this entire post and Rader2146 nailed it… Nice to see some people here have a good grasp on charging cells.

I use the same PV, same cells, but I charge with a hobby charger. Every charger I’ve used in the past over charged these cells. If you guys really want a decent charge use something like an iCharger or Accucel 6 if you are on a budget.

Just some additional information I didn’t see in this the about the Panasonic CGR18650CH cells.

I see a lot of people advertise these cells with a nominal voltage of 3.7v; I understand the nominal voltage is actually 3.6v, Personally I terminate at 4.1v to extend cell life.

If you cells are coming off the charger at 4.21+, the charger probably isn’t following the correct CC/Cv charging algorithm and the cells are being over charged. Terminating the cells and higher is just going to dramatically reduce cell life.


The ability to adjust charge rates and termination voltage is a nice thing.

I suspect the charger is totally faulty; 500mA into these cells is a walk in the park. My standard charge rate for these cells is cool 1A and the cells remain cool until termination at 4.1v.

It’s also not hard to confirm charge rates with a DMM, alligator clips and some magnets.