Quote: (Originally Posted by
Mephisto26)
Anyway long story short, they told me that allthough the nimh packs are good to use I may have used a wrong charger or smth like that and the output was too much and so the nimh pack in battery box 2 (secondary) fried the electronics. Is that possible by the way???
Hi Patrick-
I am far, FAR from an expert on NiMH rechargeables, but I’ve played w/ them quite a bit both in building dive light battery packs and Rebreather packs as well. Using cheesy self built chargers I’ve seen over 30 v
on a nominal 24 v Rebreather pack and close to 20 v on a nominal 14.4 volt dive light pack when fresh off the charger. I believe the literature calls this over voltage “surface charge” and if left unto themselves the packs will eventually calm down to several volts lower. If hooked up to a load the surface charge goes away quickly, but not instantly. My understanding is that my hot chargers shortened overall pack life. Quality “smart” chargers are both kinder to the pack’s overall life and do not have such a high over voltage when the pack shows ‘fully’ charged.
What nominal voltage were your packs? If memory serves, the APECS fry at anything much over a 9 volt primary (alkaline, lithium, etc) cell’s output.
Hope this helps. I have no doubt there are folks here on the board who know NiMH cells far better than I do.
Best,
Ken