I agree "M"any mods that are of decent quality are fine to charge but not "ANY". While I have not personally tested every single mod on the market, neither have you. I have however watched PBusardo measure battery voltage, use them in a device, measure, charge them in the device, then measure again. Quite a few of them either do not do balanced charging (despite claiming they do) or WORSE several actually over charge the batteries which is very bad. As someone who is an "expert" in electronics surely you must agree.
Hi, and great post..
And I'm glad to see that you understand what I've been saying.
Of course I'll never state "any" mod is fine, but "any that is of decent quality" would be very close to what a proper charger does.
I've done many test of my batteries after months of being charged in my mods, and all worked out near perfect, with a difference (when there was) of barely 0.1 V. I've been tested the power flow via a reader hooked on my USB cord and the voltage and Amp being fed has been quite stable on all the mods I've tested on, pretty much the same results from testing via my charger.
But again, the emphasis is "decent mod", and I wouldn't buy a mod that I'd have any questions about it's quality.
And one major factor is going to be the charging rate... a big problem is the 2A charging that can destabilize a battery with time, and why I keep recommending that one should stick to 0.5 to 1A rates.
Flipping can work IF done diligently AND the problem is NOT overcharging. If the mod over charges the batteries the only solution is an external charger.
If the mod is overcharging, then I'd wonder what else the mod is doing wrong.
This is the second time in this post you have said this. Yes some peoples chargers "go bad" in the sense they stop charging, but I have to see a single incident of an external charger causing these batteries to explode. If there are such cases my guess is it would be with some generic brand charger, but even then I haven't heard of any cases. I did a quick Yahoo search and the only articles were about car batteries and cell phone batteries but I didn't see any about external battery chargers. If you have examples of articles, please post some links so we can all read up on it.
There's been several posts from people throughout the last few years that stated that their charger died, killed their batteries, some melted, some had to be taken outside as it was stating to flame. Some posted pictures. I didn't save these as I didn't think that it would be something that I'd end up having people argue over the impossibility of such things.
Apparently not all companies have QC as the highest priority. See my previous mention of PBusadro reviews on internal charging. There have been Smok Sticks (internal battery mods) that have exploded while charging, guess they didn't do enough testing. Sigeli is supposedly a reputable brand but they have put out a couple of mods that couldn't even come close to putting out the claimed wattage. So they obviously didn't even QC a PRIMARY selling point, how well do you think the QC'ed the battery charger?
Well, my opinion of SMOK is less than most. Note that internal batteries (sealed) are not usually 18650 but lithium packs, and those, regardless of QC, have been prone to be very volatile... look at the tablets and cell phones using such packs that ending up becoming hand warmers.
For the wattage thing, there's been a few "scandals" for a few companies, just as QC issues with Wismec, and that's the same as any device.
Just because 1 mod from a specific brand works great, doesn't mean a different mod from the SAME brand will. Take car manufacturers for example. Even a reputable brand can have a year model of a specific car with abnormally high problem rates and generating lots of recalls. These are established 50+ year old companies selling HIGH end merchandise. My point is testing even a few dozen different mods from various brands does not give one the ability to make such a broad generalization as "ALL MODS are safe to charge in, and saying otherwise is a myth and needs to die".
The myth that is my pet peeve is the claims that one MUST get a charger, that one CANNOT ever have a mod that will charge properly, and that it's ALWAYS dangerous to charge internally. It's just reminiscent of the whole diacetyl BS.
Have you heard about Smok's quality control? Me neither. They have lot's of DOA's, Dead in 30 days, and even several explosions, yet it doesn't seem to be hurting their sales. Lawsuits? Good luck suing a Chinese company. They have been selling us lead painted toys, poisoned dog food and cosmetics, and other harmful stuff for decades. I posted several links about this in a different thread here on ECF a while back, showing how this is an ongoing issue. Search for posts with my name and the word "cosmetics" if interested in reading more. Oh and nearly every ecig maker is a Chinese company.
Again.. SMOK isn't the best example to go with. And for any product that was proven bad, the sales went down, the companies did lose a lot and some closed, the trading was closed off on their products, and word to mouth meant a lot of lost sales. Import and exports regulations are something that I deal in quite a bit and I've seen the impacts of bad situations that many don't see.
See my previous point.
I get what you are saying and to a degree I agree, NOT all mods are bad to charge in, BUT SOME are. So for a total newbie that will NOT know which ones are and which ones aren't, an external charger is better. Not only because that is the sole purpose of that device and thus less likely to have problems, BUT it has the added benefit of allowing you to vape on a different set of batteries while the other set charges. Sure some mods have "pass through" but who wants a corded vape? It's just annoying. Again to a large extent I agree with you, it is just the sweeping generalities that "it's safe to charge in ANY mod" I am finding fault with. I wouldn't have any qualms about charging batteries in my DNA 75C based mod, if I were somewhere without a charger or spare batteries.
Like you I have a background and degree in electronics. I stopped doing that years ago, but I am not a clueless schmuck either.
What it comes down to is that many don't know anything more than what they've read somewhere, regardless of the validity of the information and keep repeating it as if it was gospel...
For me, I'll research, look into it in detail, rip it apart, test it myself, confirm, discuss with experts, and only then will I state something.
In this case, the whole myth thing (explained above) is something that needs to die. Why? if only for the fact that chargers can fail just as much as any other device and should NOT be considered a fail-safe but an option. I'd rather someone be aware of the pros and cons in an intelligent fashion.
