So im not going to get optimal performance from a stock manual 510 battery? How would it differ from one of those mods? And about how long would one last?
no you're not going to get optimal performance with a stock battery for a LR atty, heck not even from a stock 510 atty or a stock 306... to be truthful..
it does come down to the math I spewed out earlier..really
guessing the time they'd last on a stock battery is really hard because the 510.riva/eGo use a pulse modulation to try and get around their underperformance issues...and it's been shown to that the mosfet in the stock batteries quickly degrades from the increased amperage of a LR atty... so it's really a crapshoot as far as how long the battery will last both charge wise and how long til it dies completely...I'd guess in the 40 minute range on a stock 510.. about 6 hours versus 8 on an 650mAh eGo...
on the mod batteries I mentioned... about 291 3 second long button presses on an AW LiMN high drain battery
... about 267 3 second long button presses on an AW LiMN high drain battery
...about 1263 3 second long button presses (on a AW 2600mAh) 18650 size battery for example
I'll try and put it as simply as I can..
an atty with a set resistance (1.5Ω in the case of the cisco LR306) at a given voltage (3.7V) has an amperage draw...
this is from the voltage divided by resistance (2.47A in this case)
all batteries have a max drain rate... the amount of amperage you can draw in a given time
and all batteries have a c rating (how fast you can draw that)
that max drain rate is found by taking the mAh rating in A (divide mAh by 1000) and multiplying by the C rate (stock generic Li-Ion batteries have a 1C rate)
so a 650 mAh riva has a max drain rate of .65A...a 900 mAh ego a .90A rate...
when the amp draw exceeds the max drain of the battery the voltage "sags" so the amp draw matches the battery's drain rate so you get reduced performance (and 510s/egos/rivas are already starting out at a lower voltage to begin with (3.2V))
you're also overstressing the battery which causes "rocky" buildup inside the battery which kills the battery's capacity, so the amount of time it lasts, the time between having to recharge goes down, and the # of times the battery can be recharged before it completely dies drops...
18650 batteries and high drains have a max drain that's greater than the amp draw....so you don't get the voltage sag nor the overstressed battery... because it's working at optimal performance too, you can take shorter drags to get the same satisfaction...
also without the voltage drop the atty will produce more heat which also translates to more vapor...
if the eGo/riva/510 actually performed at it's 3.2V without the voltage sag it'd put out 6.83W of heat with that 1.5Ω LR306 atty (a standard 510 atty is 4.18W by the way)
whereas the mod batteries which deliver the full 3.7V put out 9.13W with the same atty...
which is a huge difference... and puts that atty in the same wattage range as a regular stock atty at 5V (8-10W)
so a cheap $8 box mod with a high drain battery will outperform a $20 ego/riva battery any day of the week...
that being said if you don't care that it's not full performance, going to kill your battery eventually, but is a small form factor for about 40min to an hour for a night out...I'd go for it on a stock battery...it's not going to be the simulated High voltage vaping that they were designed for but it's still going to be an improvement over a stock atty...
