OPUS CHARGER ISSUE OLIGHT BATTERY ISSUE

I got in the last few days a OPUS BT C3100 charger and a OLIGHT RCR123 battery, the battery performance has been ace and seriously brought alive my S1 BATON, long story short I let battery get flat, torch went off, so put in new charger and it still said null, ie did not recognise battery inserted, I applied pressure onto the negative sliding contact as I found I needed to with the 123's, but still no joy, other 123 batteries charged ok, I measured voltage of 0.6v, odd I thought so put in my old xtar VC4 instantly started charging took out and put in opus and all ok, the sliding contact springs seem too weak to make decent contact on 123 size so will rough them up a bit, but any ideas on what is going on with the OLIGHT battery RCR123 3.7V 550MAH.
Any help greatly appreciated, thanks

tabetha said:

I got in the last few days a OPUS BT C3100 charger and a OLIGHT RCR123 battery, the battery performance has been ace and seriously brought alive my S1 BATON, long story short I let battery get flat, torch went off, so put in new charger and it still said null, ie did not recognise battery inserted, I applied pressure onto the negative sliding contact as I found I needed to with the 123's, but still no joy, other 123 batteries charged ok, I measured voltage of 0.6v, odd I thought so put in my old xtar VC4 instantly started charging took out and put in opus and all ok, the sliding contact springs seem too weak to make decent contact on 123 size so will rough them up a bit, but any ideas on what is going on with the OLIGHT battery RCR123 3.7V 550MAH.
Any help greatly appreciated, thanks

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First off: I always press my Opus BT-3400 slider switches against the negative flats of my 16340s. Why they didn't consider this beforehand (tension for 16340s) amazes me, especially when they included 250mA & 300mA rates just perfect for the 10440s and 16340s.

Secondly: Many chargers will apply a micro charge to cells/batteries under X, Y or Z voltage, so even though you think that the charger is doing nothing, from viewing things, it's actually charging at a small rate until the cell gets to A, B, or C voltage and then things increase.

Thirdly: At .600 volts, you probably zapped the cell, at least capacity/life cycles-wise and you might want to buy a new one. I was working up at a SEARS store and had my EagleTac D25C Ti clicky with a fully charged AW IMR 16340 and later in the day the light started shutting off. I must have left it on in my pocket for some time and it drained down to 2.53v when I got home and measured it.

.600v is pretty low, but you might be able to use it as a spare if it does charge up properly. Expect it to have suffered some damage, however.

Good luck.

Chris

Hi Chris,
Many thanks for the response, I assumed they were protected and that was to stop them draining too low so as no damage could occur or are protection circuits not for that ?, doing some searches they are supposed to be over discharge protected, maybe I should just have left it in opus charger overnight and it would automatically start on 500ma, I have a copper bar of 18mm so going to put on lathe and make 1/2" spacers for more contact tension on base of cells
Thanks for your help, I carry spare batteries and tend to run till flat, as often in positions impractical to swap out cells.

tabetha said:

Hi Chris,
Many thanks for the response, I assumed they were protected and that was to stop them draining too low so as no damage could occur or are protection circuits not for that ?, doing some searches they are supposed to be over discharge protected, maybe I should just have left it in opus charger overnight and it would automatically start on 500ma, I have a copper bar of 18mm so going to put on lathe and make 1/2" spacers for more contact tension on base of cells
Thanks for your help, I carry spare batteries and tend to run till flat, as often in positions impractical to swap out cells.

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Hi Tabetha,

Protection circuits, among others made by Seiko (watches), are somewhat of a crap shoot and as in my experience, they can be somewhat tricked on really low output levels and go past their intended parameters.

I don't generally use protected cells, although I have some here, but in my personal experience, I've gotten them to go below their 'cut-off' points. I've read here that 2.400v, or 2.800v are target points for some PCBs, but again...I've had them go below these minimum points, when the light is on moonlight/low settings.

Just my experience, so the sample size is small.

You can easily test these cut-off points by doing your own tests and see what you see, measuring them at 5...10 minute intervals on moonlight-low, so don't take my word for it.

Chris

ChrisGarrett said:

Protection circuits, among others made by Seiko (watches), are somewhat of a crap shoot and as in my experience, they can be somewhat tricked on really low output levels and go past their intended parameters.

I don't generally use protected cells, although I have some here, but in my personal experience, I've gotten them to go below their 'cut-off' points. I've read here that 2.400v, or 2.800v are target points for some PCBs, but again...I've had them go below these minimum points, when the light is on moonlight/low settings [...]

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I don't believe it is possible to "trick" a (good quality) protection circuit in such a manner.

There isn't enough data to infer what happened in your case. Possibly the overdischarge limit was set lower than what you expected, or they were poor quality protection circuits.

In my experience, overdischarge protection always works well. I've never heard of any such failures.

Gauss163 said:

I don't believe it is possible to "trick" a (good quality) protection circuit in such a manner.

There isn't enough data to infer what happened in your case. Possibly the overdischarge limit was set lower than what you expected, or they were poor quality protection circuits.

In my experience, overdischarge protection always works well. I've never heard of any such failures.

Click to expand...

Who knows?

Like you say and HKJ has tested, all PCBs aren't created equally.

Chris