5 volt batts

[jcamacho]

I received the Tenergy charger but can't tell if it's charging or not. The led display is supposed to turn on blue and indicate status and it's not doing so. These are flat tops so I was wondering if that might be the reason, tried using magnetic spacers but that doesn't seem to matter. Since these batteries appear to be charged already, I was wondering if perhaps they need to be drained first? So I'm in the process now of using one as much as possible until drained and try again. If not I'm stuck with an expensive usb charger, tried that and it works very well. I'll report back in a day or so and we'll see what happens.

 

[lefear]

I don't know what charger you are talking about but if it has slots then it is probably for single cell Ni-MH batteries.
Uless you have something like this: All-Battery.com: Tenergy Smart Universal Charger for NiMH/NiCD Battery Packs: 2.4V - 7.2V
You can't charge MadVape's 4.8 volt Ni-MH battery pack without a dedicated Ni-MH battery pack charger

I suppose you could hotwire four of the charging slots together where you connect the positive on slot 1 to the battery and the negative of slot 4 to the battery with the rest of the tabs connected in series. But that just sounds like a really bad idea.

Or you could repurpose an old cordless house-phone that uses a 4 pack Ni-MH battery by taking the battery out and cut the wires off it to use the connector, wire the connector to your madvapes battery, plug it in the phone and put the phone on the charger. (I can't believe I just thought of that, I don't know how safe it would be; but if someone is willing to risk trying this could you post your success/failure of the phone charger. I would try it myself but I don't have the battery or a PV to use the battery with, yet)

 

[jcamacho]

Just received another single cell charger yesterday which is supposed to be specific to this battery. How long do you have to charge these? Left one overnight from 10pm -6am and the light is still red. The other I charged from 4-10pm and also the light remained red and the battery felt warm.

 

[jcamacho]

I don't know what charger you are talking about but if it has slots then it is probably for single cell Ni-MH batteries.
Uless you have something like this: All-Battery.com: Tenergy Smart Universal Charger for NiMH/NiCD Battery Packs: 2.4V - 7.2V
You can't charge MadVape's 4.8 volt Ni-MH battery pack without a dedicated Ni-MH battery pack charger

I suppose you could hotwire four of the charging slots together where you connect the positive on slot 1 to the battery and the negative of slot 4 to the battery with the rest of the tabs connected in series. But that just sounds like a really bad idea.

Or you could repurpose an old cordless house-phone that uses a 4 pack Ni-MH battery by taking the battery out and cut the wires off it to use the connector, wire the connector to your MadVapes battery, plug it in the phone and put the phone on the charger. (I can't believe I just thought of that, I don't know how safe it would be; but if someone is willing to risk trying this could you post your success/failure of the phone charger. I would try it myself but I don't have the battery or a PV to use the battery with, yet)

Will the charger you mention work with ths type of battery pack. These are flat tops, where would you attach the wire clips?

 

[lefear]

Will the charger you mention work with ths type of battery pack.

Yes and no, it will work but probably shorten the life of the battery because after looking at the description closer it says not to use with battery packs with less than 1100mAh.

But I just use that charge as an example of what kind of charger is for battery packs.

These are flat tops, where would you attach the wire clips?

You like modding, find parts and junk that you have lying around and make your own charging slot, that is what I would do

 

[lefear]

Just received another single cell charger yesterday which is supposed to be specific to this battery. How long do you have to charge these? Left one overnight from 10pm -6am and the light is still red. The other I charged from 4-10pm and also the light remained red and the battery felt warm.

Are you referring to something like this: 4.8 volt NiMH Battery Charger

According to MadVapes the light doesn't change color, but I do know that some smart NiMH battery chargers use a temperature sensor to tell when the battery is charge; so if the battery felt warm then it has probably been on the charger for too long, but it should be fully charged. If you have a voltmeter a full charged battery with no load should read 5.4-5.8 volts.

 

[jcamacho]

It seems like the charge is not lasting very long on these batteries. I've left them charging for 5-6 hours and once overnight and it doesn't seem to do the trick. I'm not a heavy vaper that has to keep vaping constantly and I seem to be getting only an hour or so of good consistent vaping power. After that it's downhill pretty fast. It doesn't help that you can only charge one at a time either. I ordered another charger so that I can charge 2 at a time but if all I'm going to get is an hour, it doesn't seem worth it to me. If someone knows of a charger that can do a rapid charge on these and is able to indicate that the battery is indeed charged, please do let me know. Does anyone else with these batteries have a similar experience? I'd like to know if I'm doing something wrong or if this is the norm.

 

[wolfstone5]

Well, it looks like the new 5 volt chargers are finally in at MV.

 

[lefear]

It seems like the charge is not lasting very long on these batteries. I've left them charging for 5-6 hours and once overnight and it doesn't seem to do the trick. I'm not a heavy vaper that has to keep vaping constantly and I seem to be getting only an hour or so of good consistent vaping power. After that it's downhill pretty fast. It doesn't help that you can only charge one at a time either. I ordered another charger so that I can charge 2 at a time but if all I'm going to get is an hour, it doesn't seem worth it to me. If someone knows of a charger that can do a rapid charge on these and is able to indicate that the battery is indeed charged, please do let me know. Does anyone else with these batteries have a similar experience? I'd like to know if I'm doing something wrong or if this is the norm.

I have an idea on how you can be absolutely sure your battery pack is fully charged (you may not like it):

If you already have a four slot, single cell, NiMH battery charger what you can do is cut the yellow-green wrapper holding the battery together and now you should have four individual 1/3A, 600mAh batteries. You can now put them in the slot charger, you might need a spacer to fill the gap - just use whatever you can find lying around; this could be a big gap - try using bolt or nuts. It should now charge the batteries like a AAA battery.

As a forewarning, I don't know how the batteries are held together in the wrapper pack, I believe that all the batteries in the pack are flat top, and it won't be as convenient as having one 4-cell battery pack; but if you are giving up on these batteries this could be something to experiment with before throwing them away.

 

[six]

It seems like the charge is not lasting very long on these batteries.

I've been running the same batteries for a while now. One of the first two I got didn't seem to last. I'm still not sure why, but I'm a little suspicious that it wasn't maintaining good contact on the charger. I cleaned the top and bottom with a q-tip and a little rubbing alcohol and I cleaned the positive contact on the charger the same way. And, that battery isn't shrink-wrapped completely straight (the battery looks just a little bit "bent" when I roll it across a flat surface).

Now when I put it on the charger, I make sure the contacts are clean first and I spin it in the charger a couple of times. It works as well as the rest of them I have now.

Something to keep in mind with these is that their drain range is a whole volt. They come off the charger really close to 5.6v. They are dead very close to 4.6v. If you have a multimeter or one of the very nice little voltmeters madvapes sells, it's worth checking to make sure your batts are charging all the way up.

 

[jcamacho]

I have an idea on how you can be absolutely sure your battery pack is fully charged (you may not like it):

If you already have a four slot, single cell, NiMH battery charger what you can do is cut the yellow-green wrapper holding the battery together and now you should have four individual 1/3A, 600mAh batteries. You can now put them in the slot charger, you might need a spacer to fill the gap - just use whatever you can find lying around; this could be a big gap - try using bolt or nuts. It should now charge the batteries like a AAA battery.

As a forewarning, I don't know how the batteries are held together in the wrapper pack, I believe that all the batteries in the pack are flat top, and it won't be as convenient as having one 4-cell battery pack; but if you are giving up on these batteries this could be something to experiment with before throwing them away.

I'm willing to try it, I have 6 of these batts so I can experiment with one.

 

[hoogie76]

good idea lefear, maybe with the extra mm in 18xx mods we can build a tube to hold the batts after charging them individually..
hmmm...

 

[jcamacho]

Well they did charge with the help of some magnets but when I put them first in my Silver Bullet then my GGTB, they got incredibly hot. I could feel the heat through the mod and the atty never fired. Took them out and too hot to handle with your hands-yikes! That was enough for me-that one went in the trash. There are 4 individual cells but not loose like I thought, appear to be connected by a soldered strip of metal. I had to break this off to get them in the charger individually.

 

[lefear]

I thought they might be soldered together, but it is nice to know that you can use them individually - hoog maybe you should sell some 1/3A NiMH cells as well as a standard charger for them.

I put them first in my Silver Bullet then my GGTB, they got incredibly hot. I could feel the heat through the mod and the atty never fired. Took them out and too hot to handle with your hands-yikes! That was enough for me-that one went in the trash.

That probably means that it is a bad cell or two. Good thing you pitch them in the trash - nickel based batteries can ignite, though not as bad as lithium batteries.

Maybe that's why that battery pack wouldn't charge properly in your 4.8v charger you have.

 

[jcamacho]

Thanks for your help lefear!

 

[six]

Well they did charge with the help of some magnets but when I put them first in my Silver Bullet then my GGTB, they got incredibly hot.

Did you use the magnets in your GGTB and SB?

The atty wouldn't fire and they got crazy hot... I don't agree with the bad cell assessment. I think you experienced a short. That could have caused damage to the batteries, so tossing them might have been alright. A voltmeter or a multimeter would tell you in a hurry if a cell had vented. Ni-Mh cells disable when the vent opens, so if one cell vented, the voltage of the whole battery would be total minus vented cell.

 

[jcamacho]

I didn't use magnets when I placed the 4 individual cells into the SB and GGTB, they fit perfectly. I had noticed that prior to dis-assembly this unit would get hot when charging and I would have to stop charging at this point.

 

[six]

Oh. So you used the cells without their connector strip. You certainly experienced a short then. If you try that again, be very careful to make sure they're all facing the right way.


EDIT: Did you use anything like a cardboard tube to keep the cells from discharging in to the sides of your mods?

 

[jcamacho]

Oh. So you used the cells without their connector strip. You certainly experienced a short then. If you try that again, be very careful to make sure they're all facing the right way.


EDIT: Did you use anything like a cardboard tube to keep the cells from discharging in to the sides of your mods?

No, I sure didn't. I just popped them in individually. I had cut off the connector strips in order to charge them individually in the 4 cell Tenergy charger.

 

[lefear]

I don't agree with the bad cell assessment.

You are correct (sort of).
When jcamacho put the batteries in the pv they were probably ok cells, but what I think happened was that one of the cells where mismatched to the other three and it over-discharged quickly and went into what's called reverse charging.

I don't know if there is any rules about posting a quote from wikipedia site but here is some good info:

Reverse charging
Subjecting a discharged cell to a current in the direction which tends to discharge it further, rather than charge it, is called reverse charging; this damages cells. Reverse charging can occur under a number of circumstances, the two most common being:
When a battery or cell is connected to a charging circuit the wrong way round.
When a battery made of several cells connected in series is deeply discharged.
When one cell completely discharges ahead of the rest, the live cells will apply a reverse current to the discharged cell ("cell reversal"). This can happen even to a "weak" cell that is not fully discharged. If the battery drain current is high enough, the weak cell's internal resistance can experience a reverse voltage that is greater than the cell's remaining internal forward voltage. This results in the reversal of the weak cell's polarity while the current is flowing through the cells. This can significantly shorten the life of the affected cell and therefore of the battery. The higher the discharge rate of the battery needs to be, the better matched the cells should be, both in kind of cell and state of charge. In some extreme cases, the reversed cell can begin to emit smoke or catch fire.

Don't worry jcamacho you did nothing wrong, the batteries were probably not properly matched from the factory for our usage - we are asking a 600mAh battery to deliver 2000mA burst.
NiMH batteries can handle that kind of abuse, but when you stack them they need to be identical cells.

For more info on batteries try Wikipedia, just search for: rechargeable batteries, NiMH, Li-ion, and so on - I think I spent 6+ hours reading about secondary batteries when I first got into making my own mods.