Rechargable Batteries estimate remaining life cycles
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R-balljunkie
Contributor
you'll want a full feature battery charger that will give you the charge capacity as well as the ability to analyze the battery.
I have a powerex MH-C9000 which has a readout. very handy.
I have a powerex MH-C9000 which has a readout. very handy.
spoolin01
Contributor
You can tell the ones that are really bad by running capacity checks at a reasonable drain rate like 500mA with one of the smart chargers that will do that, such as mentioned above. LaCrosse makes a couple as well. Compare what you get to the rated capacity. A drop of 20% or a little more wouldn't be surprising, but also doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, in my experience (some of that difference will no doubt be due to using a higher drain rate than was used for rating the label capacity). That will weed out the very bad ones and the ones that have declined more than their original set-mates. From what I've seen, once they've aged quite a bit, they can go at any time. I don't make much effort to keep mine charged during long intervals on the shelf, so that may contribute to the problem.
DeepSeaExplorer
Contributor
I would put a voltmeter on them and throw out anything less than about 6.2 to 6.5 VDC. Pick the exact cut-off based upon how many you want to try to save by throwing the lowest ones out first. Do this without charging them. Once you charge them, it gets more difficult to separate the good from the bad because you would need to measure the capacity, resistance and leakage. We have used this technique to quickly cull thousands of batteries. We get so many that it's just not possible to try to recondition them all so we need a quick test to gauge them. The ones that are rejected get recycled. Since I started the recycle program here at work, we've recycled over 20,000 lbs of batteries.
bvanant
Contributor
HUH? 6.2 V? Seems a bit high to me, since AA batteries of the NIMH kind run at 1.2 V or so. 1.5 for fully charged, 0.9 and they are pretty empty. More importantly hard to know how long ago they were charged. I think the only real way to tell is to get either a smart charger or use a computer battery tester under a fixed load. The ZTS charger is great but it will not tell you real capacity.
Bill
Bill
K
KeithG
Guest
Toss the green ones with pink trim. They are evil and need to be purged.
No! No one knows. You have 2 options:
a) toss they all (or send them to me...)
b) test them
No! No one knows. You have 2 options:
a) toss they all (or send them to me...)
b) test them
DeepSeaExplorer
Contributor
Ops... I was talking multicell batteries. I breaks down to around 1 volt per cell. It's a rough method for going thru lots of batteries. Works quite well. Doesn't matter how long ago they were charged. If a battery can hold the voltage without being charged, it means there are no shorted cells and it doesn't have excessive leakage. It's then worth reconditioning.
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