Anyone else have batteries draining at different rates in their multi-cell lights?
Last time I charged this almost new matched set, they were at similar levels. This this time one was reported to be about 4.15v, while the other 2 were at 3.8-ish.
I used 2 good chargers, both reported similarly.
I clean battery contacts with acetone every time before loading them into a light.
Is this something to actually be concerned about?
Mark them, then switch them around and see if it’s the same battery slot not keeping up with the rest
Yeah, it sounds like one of the cells isn’t making good contact, since a voltage difference like that isn’t normal.
Maybe try running a single cell in the light and go through each slot, to see which one might be the culprit?
(I’m pretty sure the D18 runs them in parallel so you can do this, but someone can correct me if I’m wrong.)
If the voltage difference gets too large, it can be a problem because as soon as it makes good contact with the other cells in parallel, it’ll rapidly try to equalize voltages. Could be a heated exchange of energy.
I see. Looks like I have a little troubleshooting to do…thanks, I’ll report back.
D18 itself is imaculate internally, a well-made beast indeed…waiting on the other two batteries to finish charging…
Hmmm, all contacts look great. Suddenly it went from 1 battery being higher than the others to it being lower than the others after rotating them back into the Gyrfalcon 88. Hmm…I don’t know why the Xtar VC4s agreed with the Gyrfalcon before…
You may have the problem where one cell (in a series of multiple cells) becomes “unbalanced”, in that its voltage is significantly lagging that of the others? This phenomenon is not unusual, and leads to a faster than normal discharge of the particular cell.
The typical response to this is to fully discharge, then fully recharge each cell individually.
Assuming there is no internal deteriorating chemistry or other defect then the above procedure is usually sufficient to rebalance the voltage of each series connected cell.
That being said, cycling (usage) and age will eventually make this process ineffective.
This is good advice for cells in series, but I think the D18 runs the cells in parallel.
In such a setup, it’d be very odd if one of the cells had a significantly different voltage under normal operation.
@Serlite, agree: I just assumed a series situation. OTOH, parallel connected cells follow the leader, so-to-speak, as they discharge.
I wonder if the OP solved his issue?
Yes. I just did. It turned out it was a bad cell.
New cells from illumn.com and all is well.
First time I’ve hit a bad new cell.