I can only find one supplier on AE who will sell individual batteries. I have asked Queen if they will sell me two, and have also asked Neal as he sold me a flashlight with a 26800 in it.
Hey all, I was asked to join the forum here to help with the 26800 questions since we seem to be about the only place offering these cells.
I did a little search a while back as I was wondering who all had been using these cells and ran across this thread. Good reading. We originally brought these cells in to do some testing, for the price and capacity I just could not pass them up. Needless to say we liked them… Surprised more people have not found uses for them.
A little about Aloft Hobbies and our Lithium-Ion selection. We started offering HIGH capacity low amp cells for use in our transmitters. We soon found that sourcing quality cells for a reasonable price was a challenge. I’m sure you all can relate. After a lot of sample orders and testing we decided we would only deal with quality cells and offer them at our normal low prices. Seems to be a lot of places that charge a lot more than we do. Heck, I have seen people selling used Sony VCT6 for more than we were selling brand new fresh cells. Anyhow after a while I started stocking some HIGH amp cells as well as the high capacity. This market is interesting as prices move up and down a fair amount. For example I’m not going to restock on the Sony VCT6 as the demand for these cells seems to have pushed the price to an artificially high level, we will be stocking a Molicel instead. Will be our first Moli.
Back to the battery in question… We have a good amount of the 26800 cells in stock. We have heard from a number of customers that have put these cells through the ringer and are very pleased with them. We have been offering them for about 18 months now, so there is some history with them now. They seem to be a solid option that is holding their capacity with use.
We do our best to ship all orders very quick and we make sure the packages are well protected.
Any questions, fire away and I’ll do my best to answer.
-Wayne
Thanks Wayne and Welcome to BLF!
I've ordered a couple cells from you, will be ordering more now. The questions guys have here is the charges for Int'l shipping - not sure if you can do any better but that's what they've been asking about.
For me, I'm not totally happy with my charging setup. Can't use my nice chargers for these. Do you have any recommendations?
Welcome and thanks for posting. My order shipped real fast. I will be checking out your site next time I need cells. Do you by any chance do repairs on old analog radio transmitters? I have some Ace RC custom made models from the 80s and they are out of business.
Wayne, welcome to BLF! Really appreciate a new vendor (to us) being open and willing to communicate on here with us. Question about molicel- battery Mooch (a battery tester and reviewer) recently released information about molicel GDP's- which I guess are approved global distribution partners that must guarantee to get cells of a certain grade (is my understanding). Have you all heard about this? familiar with this? If not I can share links / contact info with Mooch if you'd like to discuss (EDIT: if you'd like to discuss with someone who has more accurate information than me). I ONLY bring this up to ask the question, not to question your processes or anything like that. As I'm sure your aware, in the current battery reseller market wcen reputable sellers are being scammed by fakes. We have all been required to pay more attention than we ever had to before. Thanks for your understanding! -Artie
My order of two QB26800 already shipped! Thanks AloftHobbies! Shipped same day as ordering! Awesome
Hello Wayne do you have any recommendations as far as charging these 26800 cells?
I use those clip-on magnetic thingies like the Folomov A1.
Which model exactly and where to buy thanks
We're very glad to have you here, alofthobbies!
Until LG/Samsung/Molicel etc manufacture these batteries, its really a bad investment.
Based on what? I disagree. Take the LiitoKala 26650-50A for example, sold under several different brands, not made by a major manufacturer, rock solid performance and reliability, have been upgraded couple times. I got a ton of these, some several years old now. Even got older 26650 off brand cells that still are working fine.
I meant all name brands, as far as I know, the 26800 is only available in one single off brand right now . The major battery vendors dont even carry it.
There is a kind of trend where major battery manufacturers do not "jump on" production of batteries that aren't of high demand in commercial/industrial applications . the sizes the major manufacturers have almost never (I am pretty sure) made are 26650, 14500, 16340, etc, because they have not been used in power tool, laptops, solar panels, cars, EV, etc... I doubt Samsung/molicel,Murata will ever make a 26800 or 26650. I mean unless they gain heavy popularity among power tool manufacturers, solar panel manufacturers, or something of the like in the coming years. It has always been up to predominantly Chinese manufacturers to make the "odd" sized Li-Ion batteries we happen to use
Let’s hope the 26800 stays around for a good while. Seems it’s main use is power packs. I’m looking forward to longer run times as I run most of my lights on high.
What is they never become available in high current ?
As is it’s a 20 amp cell. It has significant advantages over 26650 cells, needing only a new tube or an extension. Not a bad investment to those wanting the most out of a single cell light.
It’s a bit of a controversial cell the 26800…some welcome it for good reason, some despise it for fair reason. One thing I like about ‘common sizes’ is the ability to use a cell in multiple lights, but in reality my OCD permits me to make sure every light I have has a cell, some have spares. Do many 26650 lights on the market require constant current 20A cells? I’ve so far been fine with 15A on 26650 lights I have.
I got a few single 26650 lights that can pull 15-30 amps (triple LED's, quad LED's, XHP70.2 boost, etc.). I'd prefer using 30A batteries - in general, the higher the amp rating, the lower the resistance. As an example, in a single SST-40 high amp driven light, a 30A class cell may pull 9 amps while a 15A rated cell maybe can pull 7.5 amps. And the 30A cell is under less stress, less heat to do so, if it's a good cell of course.
I was going to suggest the magnetic clips also. Typically we use a hobby charger here as we like the control, but when It ’m charging loose cells like 18650 I have some of the Xtar chargers. I wonder if Xtar would be willing to make a version of their chargers for this cell size? I can always ask them. I could have one of my guys here look at making a 3D printable clip that we might be able to swap the guts from a popular charger into… Just an idea. I have a couple of guys here that are pretty good with CAD, just limited time to draw up things like this.
Looking at shipping options for our international customers. We do not ship many cells internationally as shipping from the USA is not cheap. We are looking into some options that might lower this expense and meet shipping requirements.
Fake goods - Sadly this is not limited to just battery cells, I have found many copy products out on the market, it is buyer beware, especially when it comes to popular items on Ebay or Amazon, etc. There is a ton of abuse on SD cards and 18650 cells around the globe. This is why we did a lot of testing and sample orders to find reliable partners we could source the cells from. We have used our sources for several years now and not had any issues. I hear from others with similar businesses that have purchased a large batch of counterfeit cells. It sucks! I know one of the manufacturers we use installs 18650 packs in some of their products, the cells they were using early on seemed must have been counterfeit as the useful life on them was about 18 months. They thought they were sourcing good Samsung cells. Even though they were buying in VERY large quantities they were still forced to deal with the shady battery market.
The sad thing is almost no cell manufacturer will sell direct to us as we are too small. Honestly the way the manufacturers have set up their distribution channels pretty much guarantees they will have lots of issues with fake products in the market. Sounds like molicel is trying to figure out a solution to this issue. Good to hear. If you have some links, please share them, would be interested in knowing more. Our sources are big enough to buy direct from the manufacturers, and honest enough to not cheat.
Servicing older radios - Sorry, we do not. While we do radio repairs and service it is for a single manufacturer and that alone keeps us very busy as the radios are very complex systems now with tandem RF system, aircraft telemetry and more mixing, range and channels then you can shake a stick at. For example, we sell a transmitter that is less than $80, yet it has 24 channels. We have never had this kind of power in a radio system before. The technical support issues keeps us on our toes. We do have a vintage radio section on our forum that may be of interest to you. Lots of folks will upgrade the vintage radios to our modern 2.4G solution. No more frequency issues.
Hope this all helps!
s. I have a huge weakness for flashlights too… So I do my best not to read too many threads here. Could get expensive fast. 