led's to drain low batteries

Hi all. I've been lurking here off and on for a while now, but I finally thought of a question. So here goes.

Incadescent lights use batteries quickly, but not completely.

I've heard of guys using LED lights to drain their batteries (generally 123's) all the way down.

Is this a good thing to do? Can it hurt the light?

Does it work as effectivally for AA's as it does 123's?

And does a 3W led do as well as a 1W or the multi LED lights.

If you're planning on draining lithiums, use a single-cell light. An unbalanced and overdischarged lithium pair (or trio) is not desirable ("venting with flame"). Popular choices are the Inova 24/7, the Fenix P1, or HDS's EDC lineup. Lights that completely shut down when voltage is lacking are a poor choice. I haven't really read about anyone wanting to drain alkalines. Cell-draining won't hurt the light you use, but it will hurt rechargeable batteries. Don't run those down too far - it's called "over-discharge."

I do drain alkalines. AA's mostly. e.g. when my CD player stops, I save the AA battery. When I have 2, I pop them into my Minimag with the NiteIze drop-in. They still work for a very long time and are great to keep by the bed for "night duty". Also plenty enough lite for walking at night as long as you need to "light up the woods".

Another great light is the Dorcy 1xAAA. Runs great on a "dead" battery.

For that matter, so do the SMJLED PR's.

I recommend the P1 if you have CR123's to drain. The regulation in the P1 works pretty hard. So it'll drain those down to next to nothing and even then it'll pop out of regulation and run the LED direct drive. My experience is, by that time, there's only a tiny bit left.

My P1 dies almost as soon as it falls out of regulation...

I managed to kill an old Dorcy 1AA 3 LED using it to drain old batts. On two occasions I found the battery was leaking. Don't really know if, having 3 LEDs, the light was asking too much from the nearly dead battery, which made it more likely to leak. Could certainly be faulty logic, but I will now limit my battery draining to one LED lights, and only those I don't care too much about.

Geoff

X Racer said:

My P1 dies almost as soon as it falls out of regulation...

Click to expand...

That's because the battery is completely drained.

Best I've found yet for squeezing juice out of batteries is the Dorcy Super 1 Watt.

I've had batteries measuring 1.6V still put out a usable amount of light from this thing.....batteries that won't even spark a P1.

Its sold at Target for 20 bucks....

dragoman

For draining AA batteries the UnderwaterKinetics [UK] 4AA eLed [Lux I] is great. Thanks to the kids games, I always have plenty of these to drain.

For 9 volt batteries [from smoke detector] the PalLights are great.