32600 kaidomain

I bought some protected 32600 batteries from Kaidomain a while back. I am about to finish my ssc p7 m@g light and I'm trying to charge the batteries without success. I've only tried to charge one of the batteries, but it reads -3.85 volts when tested. I tested the charger at the connector and it reads -4.20 volts. I tested one of the uncharged 32600 and it reads 3.75 volts. I don't know what the problem is here but I'm about ready to give up on m@g modding:thinking:. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

What charger are you using? A quality charger should charge the cells fine, unless they are defective.

I'm using the Kaidomain "professional charger" haha... I'm not sure how they consider it a professional charger:laughing:. I'm not sure what was wrong before, but now it seems to be charging as long as I go wiggle the connection between the wall charger and the cradle that the battery sits in.

I don't understand how I could have had a negative reading, but now I'm getting 4.04 to 4.07 volts with the battery charging in the cradle. Should I let it charge to 4.02 volts or 4.20 volts? Thanks very much.

you get a negative reading when you have the leads on the opposite terminals

the charging might be very slow, if you have a meter handy, just put the meter on there, and keep checking back, if the voltage keeps going up then it will eventually charge.
its a big cell, and charging it slowly is (sorta) safe for it, so some of the problems you might feel exists, might just need more time.

Superdave said:

you get a negative reading when you have the leads on the opposite terminals

Click to expand...

Oh, so reading dc current is different then reading ac current? With ac it doesn't matter. I guess you learn something new every day.

Thanks

ti-force said:

Oh, so reading dc current is different then reading ac current? With ac it doesn't matter. I guess you learn something new every day.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Measuring current is the same, Voltage is different.


Remember, Voltage is pressure.. Current is the actual electron flow. Current is measured in series with the load. Voltage is measured in parallel with the load.

I always learn something new on this forum. I'm glad I joined:thumbsup:. Now, I have another question. I remember reading on here, somewhere, that you can use magnets to charge batteries instead of a cradle. How do you do that? Do you just solder the negative lead from the charger to one magnet and the positve lead to the other magnet and then stick the negative magnet to the negative on the cell and stick the positive magnet to the positive side of the cell? I've included some pics of my charger:

Here is the hot glued cradle, with the glue not working very well (the glue is splitting):




Here is one of the cell in the cradle:



And here is one of the connection. The process of making the connection includes wiggling the connection, crossing fingers and then waiting to make sure the red light on the charger stays lit. When the red light goes back out within about 30 seconds, I repeat those steps again. It's very aggrivating. Here's the pic:

ti-force said:

I remember reading on here, somewhere, that you can use magnets to charge batteries instead of a cradle. How do you do that? Do you just solder the negative lead from the charger to one magnet and the positve lead to the other magnet and then stick the negative magnet to the negative on the cell and stick the positive magnet to the positive side of the cell?

Click to expand...

That is pretty much the jist of it. Only thing is heat damages magnets so they don't stick so good. But, others have managed to do it. There are other home made charging cradles on here that have come out well. And, my preference is for a charging clamp. No magnets needed and the added benefit of accidental shorts are easy to avoid.
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/89363
Cy here has instructions on how he built his, but they are down right now for some reason. Hopefully the link will be fixed/restored at some point. If not, you can probably get an idea how to build it just by reading the text.

Here is a larger version, on steroids
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/226942

I was reading some negative values on some new eneloops I bought, and it turned out I had the plug on my multimeter in the amp terminal and not the volt terminal.

Once I corrected it, all the eneloops were reading appropriate voltage values.