Yoda4561
Flashlight Enthusiast
Well I've had my C9000 for a year or two now, and it's been perfect with any NIMH battery I've used it with, including some very messed up 2500 mAH ones. With Nicads though the behavior has been odd in some cases. Mostly I use it on solar yard lights to refresh or break in 600 mAH nicads , on some of the obviously no-good ones it will seem to refuse to charge, display 125mA rate(regardless of what it's set at) and even after 24 hours will just repeat the same screen on that battery, 125mA, 0.00v, 0 mAH. I assume that's just normal for ruined batteries, the ones still in half decent shape or even not so great shape will charge normally and terminate around 300-500 mAH.
So the ruined batteries finally need replacing and this is where I'm starting to question the c9000 for regular nicad use. I have some Malibu brand yard light batteries, marked NICD 900 mAH. These have been sitting in the garage for a year or so, so I did a break-in charge on them first. I stopped it in the middle of the last cycle on the breakin, because I was in a hurry to get them charged up and didn't much care about the exact capacity. A 600 mA charge rate resulted in all the batteries taking over 1000 mAH in charge, so I terminated it there manually, assumed that they were mislabeled 1200 mAH nimhs and restarted the charge. Two of them terminated at around 1200mAH, the last one held at 1.45v for over 10 minutes and then started to vent a bit of gas, so I pulled it right away. It's sitting in a 1xAA flashlight now and seems to be working perfectly fine. Anyone else have this experience with nicads or knows why the charge wouldn't terminate before venting? Are they just crappy batteries? :shrug:
So the ruined batteries finally need replacing and this is where I'm starting to question the c9000 for regular nicad use. I have some Malibu brand yard light batteries, marked NICD 900 mAH. These have been sitting in the garage for a year or so, so I did a break-in charge on them first. I stopped it in the middle of the last cycle on the breakin, because I was in a hurry to get them charged up and didn't much care about the exact capacity. A 600 mA charge rate resulted in all the batteries taking over 1000 mAH in charge, so I terminated it there manually, assumed that they were mislabeled 1200 mAH nimhs and restarted the charge. Two of them terminated at around 1200mAH, the last one held at 1.45v for over 10 minutes and then started to vent a bit of gas, so I pulled it right away. It's sitting in a 1xAA flashlight now and seems to be working perfectly fine. Anyone else have this experience with nicads or knows why the charge wouldn't terminate before venting? Are they just crappy batteries? :shrug:
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I certainly hope I didn't get something horribly wrong here. :thinking:The break-in charge is a 3 step process, charge at .1c, discharge, recharge at .1c and then it displays the capacity, I interuppted the break-in during the last recharge with around 190 mAH put into the battery, that should have been perfect for a recharge at normal rates. I'll chalk it up to spotty batteries, I'll need to buy a few more packs for the rest of the old yard lights, hopefully those wont act the same way.
