White amazon basics only charging to 450mah

Hi guys. Great forum. Based on what I read on here I purchased a the maha c9000 a few years ago and some eneloop batteries. Both have been well worth it thanks.

I have some 5 month old White Amazon basics that are rated at 750mah. FYI box said they were from China not Japan so they are probably not rebranded eneloops. I charged them and realized I got low mah out of them so after using them for the day in my head lamp I preformed a refresh and analyse with my maha c9000. One came out 405mah the other two were in the high 400's. I don't have a lot of experience with this charger and have a few questions. I had one more

What should I do next? From what the manual says I should preform one or two more refesh and analyze. What should the Charge and discharge rates be for this? My first time I charged at 200 (my normal charge rate and discharged at 100. I assumed that slower discharge would be better but I could be wrong. If refresh doesn't work what then?

When should I use the cycle feature?

I'm not sure what the cycle feature on the Maha is but I have a Lacrosse that usually takes a half dozen or more cycles to gain the most capacity lost possible from refreshing batteries. The refresh does continuous charge/discharge cycles keeping track of total mah till there is no more gained in refreshing. If the Maha supports that type of cycle feature I would use it, if not I would keep track of each cells total mah and do another cycle and see if you get substantial gain and if so do another cycle.

Lynx_Arc said:

I'm not sure what the cycle feature on the Maha is but I have a Lacrosse that usually takes a half dozen or more cycles to gain the most capacity lost possible from refreshing batteries. The refresh does continuous charge/discharge cycles keeping track of total mah till there is no more gained in refreshing. If the Maha supports that type of cycle feature I would use it, if not I would keep track of each cells total mah and do another cycle and see if you get substantial gain and if so do another cycle.

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it does a charge/discharge cycle. I'm not sure how many times it runs the cycle or what criteria it reaches to stop.

finitetime said:

it does a charge/discharge cycle. I'm not sure how many times it runs the cycle or what criteria it reaches to stop.

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You could estimate how long it would take per cycle based upon the capacity of the battery and charge/discharge rates. at 200/100mah cycle rates it would take 2 hours/4 hours minimum or 6 hours... with loss and other factors perhaps 7-8 hours to do a single refresh cycle. If you can't recover the cell capacity to normal I would contact Amazon and tell them the batteries are bad and try to see how old they are they may have been sitting for too long on the shelf. Chinese LSD cells are a lot more fragile than Japanese cells.

try charging them in dumb timer charger, and discharge using your smart charger. see if there is any difference, i did have cells that would not charge fully in smart chargers before.

alpg88 said:

try charging them in dumb timer charger, and discharge using your smart charger. see if there is any difference, i did have cells that would not charge fully in smart chargers before.

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This is possible if the cells for some reason have high IR and are overheating while charging or something. You could watch the voltage of the cells while charging to get a better idea I guess.

Lynx_Arc said:

This is possible if the cells for some reason have high IR and are overheating while charging or something. You could watch the voltage of the cells while charging to get a better idea I guess.

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yes those cells that terminate charge too early in smart chargers, do get hot in dumb chargers, but not too hot to touch, but they fully charge that way,

alpg88 said:

try charging them in dumb timer charger, and discharge using your smart charger. see if there is any difference, i did have cells that would not charge fully in smart chargers before.

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Thanks for the help guys. I found this on the website for the charger and am going to try it and if it doesn't help I guess I'll go on an scavenger hunt for my old dumb charger.

BREAK-IN MODE

• - Applies a 16-hour 0.1C charge (0.1 times the capacity of the battery), rest for one hour, followed by a 0.2C discharge, rest again, and finally a 16-hour 0.1C recharge again.​
• - This process is also known as "Forming Charge." Also recommended with batteries that cannot be rescued by the Refresh & Analyze mode.​
• - The process follows the IEC standard for determining battery capacity.​

I bought an 12 pack of AmazonBasic AAA 800Mah a couple of weeks ago, The white label with the green stripe at the positive end, Made in China.

After i did an manual "discharge-charge-discharge" in my Maha C9000 and they showed a capacity between 810/820Mah across the 12 pack



I also bought an 16 pack of AmazonBasic AA 2000Mah the other day, They also had the white label with the green stripe at the positive end, Made in China

But after an "discharge-charge-discharge" they only showed a average capacity of around 1740-780Mah across the 16 pack.

EDIT: Busy doing an charge/analyse on 4xAA to see if the capacity increases.

John.

If these AmazonBasics are claiming to be LSD then they should be good to go after a single charge. If they are not LSD then it is reasonable that they will require breaking in.

The C9000 manual says to use:
Break-In Mode on new batteries and batteries that haven't been used in more than 3 months
Refresh & Analyze on batteries that haven't been used in more than 2 weeks, and 1-3 times on batteries with poor performance.

What the manual doesn't mention is that this is for non-LSD NiMH, and that batteries should always be fully discharged before running Break-In Mode.

Since your batteries are new, I would recommend a full discharge followed by a Break-In to see where you're at.

If your new batteries are not making at least 80% of their rated capacity I would send them back.

Please make sure you do a full discharge on your cells before doing a Break-In run

I would take it up with amazon and see if they will exchange them for the Japanese ones.

amazon may have several factories making cells for them, or they wrap amazon wrappers on cells made by different manufacturers, looks like some are better than others

I ordered 4AA Amazon basics and got black ones. They were made in China (same with the higher capacity, they're gray with green at the + end). I haven't tried the high capacity yet but the standard black ones work well, similar to the Eneloop cells.

Your C9000 should run an IR test. Check the voltage when you first insert the batteries. It should show 1.38v or higher on the very first volt reading. Sometimes you may have to remove and reinsert to get this reading.

Also, maybe you got a bad set.

I ran another Refresh & Analyze and all the batteries topped out at spec or better. I also tested the others in the pack and I had one more do the same but it also came up to spec after running another Refresh & Analyze. Is it possible these are cheaper versions and needed to be cycled a few times to reach there full potential. I also have some aa that I purchased last month and will be testing them also.

Probably old stock. Sitting around for a while, it happens. I'm guessing they'll be good for a long time now if you keep them charged decent.