Month: May 2009

I got the charger yesterday and started putting it through its paces right away. My oldest batteries are 1500 mah. My newest came with a cheap charger that was free with my flashlight. I picked two from each of those sets. Time to put the testing regimen into action.

I have worked on 4 old generic green 1500 mah cells that came with my Archos and therefore are 7 years old. I got capacities from 571 to 1220, so all over the place. I may throw away the weaker of those. I have 4 more, so we’ll see how it goes. It would be nice to have a set of 4 strong ones. Doing a Refresh/Analyze cycle actually seemed to hurt a couple of them.

Continue reading “Maha MH-C9000 Results”

I wrote all of this up based on reading up on the Maha C9000 charger, but before I got it. Once I start getting some results, I will post that later. I have a collection of 40 NiMH batteries ranging in age from 9 years to just a couple of weeks. They all take a charge on my old charger, but some are pretty weak. A couple of sets that Susan used in a quick charger are pretty damaged and don’t hold a charge for very long at all. I was interested to see what kind of results I could get in reviving them with my new charger, the Maha MH-C9000.

If a battery hasn’t been used for 3 months or has just been purchased, Maha recommends starting out with break-in cycle. This cycle is based on some international standard used to measure the capacity of batteries.

Continue reading “Battery Rehab”

In 2005 Sanyo introduced Eneloop NiMH rechargeable batteries. Part of their marketing was that they are already charged when you get them and you can use them right away. The reason for this is they charge them at the factory and that the batteries have “low self discharge” (LSD), in other words it takes them much longer to lose a charge sitting on a shelf than other NiMH batteries. Sanyo claimed that Eneloops will retain 85% of their charge after a year. I bought some last year and have no reason to doubt the claim. I have two HP calculators that eat through AAA batteries so I wanted something rechargeable but also something with a fairly long shelf life. I thought it would be good to have a set for my Archos Jukebox too since I have been charging its batteries separately instead of by using the AC adapter it came with (gets very hot and can’t be good for the batteries).

Continue reading “Eneloop Batteries”

In 2002 I researched and bought a good battery charger called the Maha C-204F. It only does AAA and AA batteries, but it charges them fairly slowly which means they are charged more fully and with less heat (damaging) than the fast chargers that you get at regular stores. I had to order the Maha (billed as “the mother of all chargers”) from Thomas Distributing because they aren’t easy to find. It worked great for a couple of years before one side of it went bad and I could only charge two batteries at a time instead of four. Eventually I bought another one just like it from Thomas in 2006. I burned out its AC adapter in Ireland when I plugged it in to a 220 socket, but I had the old adapter, so no problem.

After my dealings with flashlights lately, I also learned some about batteries and particularly NiMH rechargeable batteries. I have been using them for a long time and even got some Sanyo Eneloops in 2008 to use in my calculator because they hold 85% of their charge after year whereas regular NiMH batteries can easily lose 10% per month. After three months of no use you really need to recharge regular NiMH batteries because if they get too low it can damage them. I got some pretty high capacity NiMH batteries to go with Susan’s camera a few years ago and they were toast after maybe a year. They just never held a charge very well. Part of that may have been not adequately breaking them in by charging them and then using them (not all the way down) a few times.

Continue reading “Powerex Maha MH-C9000 Charger”