Rebuilding 6-D and 4-D battery packs?

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spoolin01

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I've got a couple of the 6-D battery packs (e.g SS150) and a 4-D from a Substrobe Ai. I've seen the advice that the high capacity NiMH can blow the oscillator circuitry in some older strobes. I had purchased 10 Ah NiMH cells for planned rebuilds, but it seems it might be pointless. Does the problem extend to the Ai as well? Is there a smaller capacity that you'd think could work? I think the original batteries were around 5 Ah, is that right? Is it the NiMH vs NiCd?

By the way, I use high-cap NiMH AAs in the old A35 and S slave strobes and haven't had any issues.

I'm curious what exactly causes the problem? It's the same voltage, so how do the newer batteries create the issue?
 
Newer batteries have a much lower internal resistance than the ones we used to use in the Substrobe 400 type battery pack. This combined with higher currents ended up toasting many Substrobe 300's and 400's. However the 150 has a slower recycle time and different oscillator & transformer design, so the newer batteries may work OK with it. Though we never did any formal testing of the newer batteries with those older strobes.

We wouldn't expect any problem using newer cells (NiCad or NiMH) with Ai or 100A strobes.

Regards,
Jean / Ikelite
IKELITE Underwater Systems
 
Thank you, that's good to know. I'm cycling the batteries a couple of times first, then I'll try the Ai pack. I'll post with the results.
 
Sorry, I don't seem to get email notices when a reply is posted. I managed to rebuild the 4D pack for the Ai. It was a challenge getting everything soldered and shrink-wrapped into a sufficiently compact form to fit like OEM, but I managed an OK job of it. The pack seemed to work fine, though it wasn't a strobe I used for diving, so I only ran it through a couple of charge/discharge cycles for testing.

Soldering the terminals was a big challenge, and easily became a big mess. I'm not very practiced, and probably don't have the proper knowledge and equipment. I'm going to try a small spot welder for several other battery pack projects.
 
I'm using a iMax B6AC charger now (eBay $33) and tossed the old Ikelite non-smart charger after cutting off the male plug with 12inches of wire to reuse for interfacing to the iMax charger. Also purchased a Mini DC-DC Converter Step Down Buck Power Supply Module for $3.95 (eBAy) to help regulate the voltage down to 7.2V the strobe head will get to operate. I have been using this Nimah battery back for 2 years now without the step down power supply controller. Since it was cheap enough, I'm going to put it inline to the DC power feed to the strobe head connection. Anybody else still using older IKE substrobes?
 
LOL, just noticed your post. Wish the email notifications would work on SB.

I'm curious why you need to use the buck converter? Don't you program the charger with the number of cells, so it knows the target voltages?

I just got the similar Turnigy Reaktor 20A charger, and it already nearly paid for itself by bringing a dead power tool battery pack back to life.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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