Proper Charging Technique ?

[jayflash]

After completely charging, topping off, and trickle charging, four NiMH cells for a while, I removed the cells and let them sit for a couple hours. When reinserting them into my C. Crane charger, it ran them through the soft start, quick, top off, and trickle modes. The charging was completed in about 20 minutes.

Does this indicate the cells accepted additional charge or was it an overcharge? How does trickle charging affect cell life and capacity?

Thank you for any information.

 

[MrAl]

Hi there,

I dont have a definite answer for you, but i would bet
there is very little extra charge accepted by the battery.

There is a slight chance that if the batteries are left
to cool (after the initial charge) that the lower
temperature of the cell means it's ready to accept a
little more charge, but with each charge there is
a small amount of over charge as well which acts
to diminish cycle life of the cell.

If you approximate the amount of time that the second
charge was actually forcing the cell to accept more
charge to be 5 minutes out of the 20 minutes then
you would have succeeded in pumping up the storage
by a mere 4 percent.

Would repeated charges pump it up even more?
Once the chemical state changes it probably involves
most if not all of the mass so there is none left to
change.

Any other ideas from anyone else?

Take care,
Al