You know following Mooch for all these years I don't know if his rating is just for continuous or not. If he measures by continuous, that is a bit unfair to vapers. As no vaper is going to fire for an hour or whatever it takes to drain the battery completely. Aspire rating is far more practical. Although it is still a bit tough. As I don't think I ever met a vaper who can vape for 10 seconds and wait 5 seconds and then repeat until the battery is empty. But going by how Aspire measures it, I can't disagree with their specs.
Ratings and capabilities are completely different things. Aspire’s numbers are capabilities.
The continuous current rating for all the batteries we use is critical. It is the industry standard and allows us to easily weed out the batteries that don’t fit the way we vape. Which vaper hasn’t looked at that number when seeing a new battery?
The continuous current rating is also critical for safety. If vaping above that then the risk of the cell venting (not runaway, most likely) goes up if there is a mod malfunction or accidental button press.
Any battery can be used at a 5 sec on/10 sec off rate. But, what happens to the cycle life? How hot does it get? What does the voltage sag to? Those “pulse” numbers mean nothing unless we define that usage as a rating and not just a simple capability of the battery.
To change Aspire’s numbers from a capability and make them a rating we need to know the on time and off time (which we have) but also the criteria used to set the rating. Without that we can’t use the number to compare any batteries with. As any battery can be pulsed at far beyond it’s continuous rating, at increased risk...knowing the criteria used to set the rating is critical.
What should the criteria be? Lower power vapers might want it to be based on cycle life and run time? The high power vapers might want it to be based on cell temperature and voltage sag? Do we need multiple “pulse” ratings for every style? How do we define a “pulse” rating that everyone can use?
My initial attempts at that were a failure due to the community using the rating as a starting point rather than a limit not to go past. If not just for the sake of our safety this isn’t good practice as we are under increased scrutiny and possibly much, much worse battery and hardware regulations are coming.
While Aspire’s numbers could be used by some the same numbers could be applied to any battery with a similar continuous current rating. How useful are they really then?
Each person can choose the level of risk we want to take when vaping. In my opinion any person who is asked to recommend a max current level to operate a battery at shouldn’t recommend doing so above the continuous rating. It provides a bit of safety margin and allows for the battery to age (decreasing its rating) without significantly increasing the risk to the vaper. We have to assume the worst for anyone who asks for advice. That means abused, old batteries being used. I do not recommend pulsing them at rates that high. And yet, if we say batteries can be pulsed that hard they will be pulsed at much higher current levels all the way until they are replaced, by a large number of vapers.
Lastly, at pulsed or continuous current levels higher than about half the continuous current rating a battery becomes quite inefficient. At 30A a good performing 18650 wastes 18W of power inside it! That is before all the voltage drops and power loss through the mod itself, even before it gets to the coils. We want POWER! I get it, I really do. But our expectations for these tiny batteries has gone wayyyyy past their capabilities.
Recommending staying under the continuous rating is not only a decent idea for safety but also helps to ensure long battery life. Few people think to ask about that up front but we all complain if we have to replace our batteries more often. Pulsing a battery at above its rating accelerates its aging, even if the battery doesn’t get hot. The heating is often localized and spreads out by the time it reaches the metal can.
I appreciate and understand your frustration, but there is just no good way to present “pulse” information to the community that would actually be useful.
