18650 Size High Capacity NiMh Battery Available

Batteries and Chargers Rechargeable Batteries
8

Yes, like I do with laptops, mobile phones, tablets, mp3 players and all other devices that use Li-Ions.

9

I take it you use protected? Either way fair enough. I personally will not run li-ions until they die but I will scavenge cells and use those in multicell applications. :D

10

Protected 3100mAh batteries (IOS ones) in multi-cell lights, unprotected ones (mostly Sanyo 2600mAh) in single-cell ones.

11

Okay, that makes sense. I try to be more careful with my scavenged ones after what happened with my DRY.

12

What happened to your dry?

I usually run mine till about 20% capacity, if not all the way down. But if I’m bored ill change that battery even if it’s at 80%.

13

Here.

14

I found 18650 size NiMH-batteries in a 12 year old laptop last year, (can't remember the brand name, they are at my work adress). So they have been around for a while...

15

Such consumer devices to do not let you run down a battery beyond a certain point, so it’s not really an example of doing what scaru asked you if you would do.

A better and more relevant example would be running your unprotected Sanyo cells down until they are barely capable of powering your lights anymore (that is, those light that don’t have low voltage protection built into them anyway). You wouldn’t do it. At least you wouldn’t do it if you planned on continuing to use those cells anyway, unless you like to live on the edge.

Sure, I endeavour not to over-discharge my NiMH cells either. But the point here is that they don’t become volatile even if you do, which does indeed make them inherently safer. You seem to be arguing (albeit somewhat indirectly) that this isn’t the case, and I’m not sure why.

16

A very good point, a while back I took apart a iphone and measured the voltage of the battery when it was "fully" charged it was at 4.1 volts. I seriously doubt they discharge them very far either. I tend to abuse all of my batteries and take risks with them (hence my DRY incident) but I would never intentionally run an unprotected battery until it shut off, especially in multicell applications.

17

By only charging the cell to 4.1V and not discharging it below 20%, you can increase the life of the cell by and order of magnitude. This is what quality consumer devices and electric vehicles do.

18

Sure, this sort of thing is even true with NiMH.

19

You speak about HR4/3AU cells? Doesn’t Sanyo sold parts of the battery business to FDK a few years ago (2009 or 2010)?
Then FDK would have bought a lot of knowledge with it and it could be interesting.

20

That's correct Buwuve.

Here are some links. IMPORTANT: I had sent these links in a PM and I just tried transferring them here BUT THEY SEEM ONLY TO WORK IF YOU COPY AND PASTE THEM INTO YOUR BROWSER ADDRESS BOX:

http://www.fdk.com/company_e/gaiyo-e.html

http://www.fdk.com/battery/nimh_e/index.html

http://www.fdk.com/battery/lithium_e/index.html

http://www.fdk.com/company_e/sei_j_point-e.html

http://www.fdk.com/company_e/sei_w_point-e.html

http://www.fdk.com/company_e/syoukai-e.html

http://www.fdk.com/company_e/han_w_point-e.html
(notice that they have 2 sales office in Germany)

By the way, I can easily obtain these at wholesale if there is enough interest. I'm already getting samples for a couple of members and myself but I didn't think there would be enough interest to order the MOQ.

Regards,

Bob

21

If any, it’s the 4500 mAh HR-4/3FAU that would be of the most interest. But they don’t look like they are LSD to me, otherwise they’d be bragging about it.

By the way KumaBear, your links seem to be clickable after all.

22

I’m speaking of protected 18650’s at the moment. They can be compared to laptop/phone/etc batteries, because they even use protection circuits by same manufacturer.

23

Not really, most protection circuits on normal batteries are dead at around 3.3 volts but protection circuits kick in much later. Also in multicell packs they are balance charged and individually monitored.

24

Hi cainn!

Thanks for the update - must be some BLF magic.

Best Regards,

Bob

25

I guess I don’t see the point of these batteries.

Any light or other electronic that would normally take 18650s will be expecting 3.7 average voltage, with overdischarge protection at 2.7 volts or whatever.

Therefore, putting these NiMH into any flashlight will probably not even work, and if it did, would be extremely underpowered even if the driver was really forgiving with a wide input voltage range.

As said, you would need specific flashlights wired to accept these, which would certainly be quite a task and offset any safety advantages gained.

Secondly these batteries are very inefficient. A LiIon 14500 (AA sized) is 3.7 volts at around 800ish mAh? For a total of 3 watt*hours.
A typical NiMH will be 1.2volts at 2000mah = 2.4 watt hours. LiIon is certainly better, but not THAT much better. And that’s for LSD eneloops.

The D batteries that run my TK70 are 10,000 mAh = 12 watt*hour, which is similar to an 18650. And they are real values, low self discharge accu-evolution.

But these pieces of crap are awful! While an 18650 is about 3.5x as strong as a 14500, this 18650-sized turd is only about twice as strong as its NiMH AA counterpart! Thats bad.

26

I anyone going 2 try and see if these bats are available for retail? or wholesale for that matter.

27

Like I said earlier, these could be used in a flashlight with the right sort of P60 drop-in. You know, the 0.9v to 4.2v ones. Also, I don’t see how even modding a standard flashlight to somehow accept them would make them potentially volatile like Li-ion cells can be.

But I agree with you about capacity. I don’t think I’d bother with the novelty of it all unless they could provide significantly more than 4500 mAh.