Re: Battery Management

[Alan P. Hayes]

I find that I don't trust my own anecdotal evidence much when it 
comes to rechargeable batteries. That said, different chargers and 
different batteries definitely vary quite a bit in terms of how much 
heat they generate when charging. I've had a couple of sets that 
appeared to have gotten fried by chargers, not before getting a 
reasonable amount of use out of them, fortunately. I'm using a 
Lightning Pack 4000 from RipVan100 which seems pretty good, and 
definitely shuts off if the batteries start to overheat. You have to 
restart the charger manually when they do!

This is the only reasonably systematic discussion of how actual 
chargers perform that I've found.

<http://www.crypto.com/chargers/>
At 10:18 AM -0400 4/10/05, Mark Cassino wrote:
From: "Alan P. Hayes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I get the impression that a lot of what people describe as memory 
problems are really just out and out battery damage due to 
overheating and probably other stuff.
....
I have an Energizer 30 minute charger. The batteries are HOT when 
they come out - they won't physically burn your fingers, but they 
are too hot to comfortably hold in your hand.

I bought this a couple of years ago to replace an older Rayovac 
charger that took about 8 hours to charge up a set of NMHi 
batteries. Unfortunately the Rayovac was damaged when a battery 
leaked inside of it.

I've been tossing NiHI that are in the 3 year old range - they won't 
take a charge from the energizer charger. It's hard to say how much 
use they get since they have been used in the *ist-D, CoolPix 990, 
and lots of flashes. But could the high temps of the charger be a 
problem?

Thanks -
MCC
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Mark Cassino Photography
Kalamazoo, MI
www.markcassino.com
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--
Alan P. Hayes
Meaning and Form: Writing, Editing and Document Design
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Photographs at
http://www.ahayesphoto.com/americandead/index.htm